Heraclitus Seminar, 1966-67

HERACLITUS SEMINAR 1966 I 67 MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND EUGEN FINK

Translated by Charles H. Seibert

TilE L:'\ IVERSITY OF AI.:\ BAM:\ PRESS Unit•rnity, Alabama

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The translator gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from copyrighted works as follows: (I) from G. S. Kirk, Heraclilw: The Cosmic Fragmmts, edited with an Introduction and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); (2) from G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical Hi.stmy wilh a Stkction ofText.s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957); (3) from Friedrich HOlderlin: Ponns & Fragments, translated by Michael Hamburger (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966); and (4) from Alcaic Ponns by Friedrich Holderlin, translated by Elizabeth Henderson, copyright © 1962 by Elizabeth Henderson, published by Oswald Wolff (Publishers) Ltd., London.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Heidegger, Manin, 1889-1976. Heraclitus Seminar, 1966/67. Translation of Heraklit, which is a summary of the papers from the Heraclitus Seminar held at the University of Freiburg i. Br., during the winter semester 1966-1967. I. Heraclitus, of Ephesus-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Fink, Eugen,joint author. II. Title. B223.H4313 182' .4 78-27261 ISBN 0-8173-6628-8

Translated into English from Heralrlit, copyright © 1970 by Vittorio Klostermann Verlag. English translation and addenda Copyright © 1979 by The University of Alabama Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS Translator's Foreword

vu

~~~~~rm~~~

1 2

3

4 5 6

7

~

Mode of Procedure.-Beginning with Fragment 64 (Correlated Fragments: 4I, I, 50, 47)

Hermeneutical Circle.-Relatedness of hr and :n:avta (Correlated Fragments: I, 7, 80, IO, 29, 30, 4I, 53, 90, IOO, I02, I08, II4) I5

:n:avta-6M1, :n:avta avta-Different Exposition of Fragment 7 (Correlated Fragment 67).-:n:civ ~Q:Jt£"t6v (Fragment II).-Maturation Character of the Seasons (Fragment IOO)

27

tiA.Lo~. Daylight-Night, vbQ
The Problem of a Speculative Explication.-:n:iiQ time? (Fragment 30)

37

cif(~(I)()V and

TCUQ and :n:avta (Correlated Fragments: 30, I24, 66, 76, 3I)

49

6I

Difference of Interpretation: Truth of Being (Fragment I6) or Cosmological Perspective (Fragment 64).-Heraclitus and the Matter of Thinking.-The Not-Yet-Metaphysical and the No-Longer-Metaphysicai.-Hegel's Relationship to the Greeks.-:n:uQ(>~ 'tQO:n:a( and Dawn. (Correlated Fragments: 3I, 76)

8

3

71

Intertwining of Life and Death (Correlated Fragments: 76, 36, 77).-Relation of Humans and Gods (Correlated Fragments: 62, 67, 88)

84

9

Immortal: Mortal (Fragment 62).--ho "tO ooqxSv (Correlated Fragments: 32, 90)

97

10 The Standing Open of Gods and Humans (Fragment 62). The "Speculative" in HegeL-Hegel's Relationship to Heraclitus.-Life - Death (Correlated Fragments: 88, 62)

11

12 13

I 08

The "Logical" in Hegel.-"Consciousness" and "Dasein."-Locality of Human Beings between Light and Night. 122 (Correlated Fragments: 26, 10)

Sleep and Dream-Ambiguity of Wrt£o6aL (Correlated Fragments: 26, 99, 55)

137

Reference to Death, Awaiting- Hoping (Correlated Fragments: 27, 28).-The "Contraries" and their "Transition" (Correlated Fragments: Ill, 126, 8, 48, 51 ).-Closing Question: The Greeks 150 as a Challenge Notes

163

Glossary

166

Page Guide

171

TRANSLATOR'S FOREWORD The fragments of Heraclitus have, from the beginning, attracted and influenced philosophical thinking. It is hoped that this translation will allow access by English-speaking readers to the continuing attempt at interpretation. The two principal contributors to these conversations are Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink. Of the two, Heidegger is certainly the better known to English-speaking readers. His readers will find a familiar voice here. His interpretation of Heraclitus continues to take its orientation from the fragments that deal with Myoc; and with aA.iJ9ELa. 1 These themes have recurred in Being and Time, Section 44, An Introduction kJ Metaphysics, What is Called Thinlcing,, the "Logos (HeraJclit, Fragment 50)" and "Aletheia (Heralclit, Fragment 16)" essays in Vortriige und Aufsiitze, and Nietzsche, II, Section IX. In addition to continuing Heidegger's interpretation of Heraclitus, the present work is the occasion for interpretation of other thinkers and poets, notably Hegel and Holderlin, as well as self-interpretation by Heidegger. Eugen Fink, the other principal contributor, is less familiar in the English-speaking philosophical world. This book is the first translation of Fink's work into English. His role in these conversations is to provide a preliminary interpretation of the fragments that will give the discussion a "basis and a starting place for a critical surpassing or even destruction, and [will enable] us to establish a certain common ground appropriate to inquiring discourse." Throughout the book, the conversations take their sustenance from Fink's lead. The pervading theme of interpretation is the relatedness of fv [the one] and 'tel navta [the many]. This relatedness is exemplified in many different instances in the conversations of this book. Moreover, the conversations as a whole might well be understood as one more instance of this fundamental theme in Heraclitus' thinking. For, while there is a tension between the multiple interpretations of Heidegger, Fink, and the seminar participants, the interpretation is nonetheless unified at important points of agreement. While it is not a translator's place to rehearse the details of a text, it may be helpful to alert the reader to passages in which the conversants speak for themselves about their agreements and differences. Regarding the multiplicity of interpretations, it may be worth noting that the present book records conversations, and is not the finished work of a single author. Not only does the conversational origin of the book set it apart from other recent interpretive attempts, it also accounts, at least in part, for the imaginative and experimental character of the interpretations. In conversations, we can rarely anticipate the responses of

Vlll

those with whom we talk. And if an interlocutor disagrees with us, we are often forced to take an imaginative, experimental step into areas about which we have not previously thought. What results in the present case is a mixture of premeditated consideration of the text and imaginative, extemporaneous response. Of course, not all the experiments work, as Fink himself predicts in the opening remarks and affirms at times throughout the text. Regarding more specific points of disagreement, it may not be accidental that Heidegger cites Fragment I, with its concern for the ).&yo~. soon after Fink begins his interpretation with a reference to Fragment 64, which deals with X£Q
The same position is maintained in Heidegger's closing remarks in seminar session thirteen in the present book. There, as in Section 44 of Being and Time ( 1927), it is c'U..ij8£La that lies unsaid at the base of what is said by the Greeks. In similar fashion, though not in the same words, Fink's ··spc<·ulativc"' interpretation is consonant with Hcidcgger's method of intcrpreta-

ix tion. This is perhaps most explicitly shown in the opening considerations of seminar session five. There Fink indicates that the method of interpretation consists in the attempt to pass from the concrete state of affairs presented in the fragments over to an unsensuous, though not transcendent, domain.!~ Again, Fink speaks of the attempt to comprehend macrocosmic relations from the microcosmic relations which are directly presented in the fragments. 8 And finally: When I speak of thoughtful transposition into another dimension, that is only a first auemptto circumscribe the manner of our procedure, because we still do not know what it means to go over into another dimension. If we wish to speak of an analogy in this connection, then we must think it in a specific way. In this analogy, only one side is given to us, namely the phenomenal one. As we hold selectively to specifiC phenomenal structures, we translate them into large scale in an adventurous auempt. 7

Readers who are familiar with recent English-language scholarship and interpretation of Heraclitus may find the speculative method of these conversations injudicious or lacking in caution. Some may object with one of the participants that, "More is said in the interpretation of the fragments than stands in them." Or the reader may, with Heidegger, regard the speculative treatment as "venturesome" or even "hazardous." 8 The more fragmentary the evidence, it might be argued, the more cautious we should be, and the more we must eschew speculative flights of imagination. But before dismissing this interpretation just because it is speculative, we ourselves must be a bit more cautious. Professor Fink goes to some lengths to explain how and why he departs speculatively from the specific content of a given fragment. And it may also be argued that, given the very nature of these fragments, no interpretation, cautious or uncautious, can remain only with what is immediately given in the fragments. It is precisely the fragmentary character of the fragments that not only allows but even demands a speculative approach in interpretation. This fragmentary character demands that we seek what is unsaid in what is said, since it is clear that Heraclitus was concerned with much more than the fragments of experience to which we are, for the most part, limited and that are often recorded in the existing fragments. If Heraclitus meant no more than is said in the fragments, many would be trivial and useful only as exercises for learning the ancient Greek language. Even though a particular fragment may, for example, explicitly mention only the continually flowing waters of a river (Fragments 91, 12), Heraclitus himself in other fragments sets these concrete images into the context of the dynamic relatedness of all things to the one, and of the one to all things. The fragmentary character of the fragments is an invitation to see beyond them.

X

Within the context of recent interpretive and critical scholarship on Heraclitus, one of Fink's particular interpretive strategies is noteworthy. This strategy may be most easily indicated by reference to some remarks in the preface to G. S. Kirk's Heraclitus: The Cosmological Fragments. On page xii of the preface, Kirk writes: In the present study only about half the total number of extant fragments receive detailed consideration. "The cosmic fragments" are those whose subject-matter is the world as a whole, as opposed to men; they include those which deal with the Logos and the opposites, and those which describe the large-scale physical changes in which fire plays a primary part. They do not include those which deal with religion, with god in relation to men, with the nature of the soul, with epistemology, ethics or politics; nor do they include Heraclitus' attack upon particular individuals OT upon men in general, although the ground of these attacks is very often an impercipience of the Logos or its equivalents. These fragments, which might be termed "the anthropocentric fragments," could be made the subject of a later study.

Defending this procedure, Kirk writes further: ... the fragments fall not unnaturally into the two classes which I have indicated, which can be separately treated-provided full cross-reference is carried out-without distortion either of individual fragments or of the subject as a whole. This justification only applies, or course, to a work which, like this one, consists essentially of a series of commentaries on individual fragments. It remains true that Heraclitus took a synoptic view of the problems he was facing, and that his answer to any one of them cannot be entirely dissociated from his answers to all the others; in particular, his views on the constitution of the soul and its means of contact with the outside world bear upon the nature of the Logos, and vice versa. The author has had the anthropocentric fragments in mind when considering the cosmic ones; and since most of his readers are likely to be familiar with all the extant fragments, the dangers of misunderstanding are slight.

Against the background of these remarks, two passages in Fink's interpretation stand out. In seminar session 7, while attempting to understand the words 1tUQO~ tQ01ta( [transformations of fire], Fink says: We do not understand the turning over of fire into what is not lire in the sense of a chemical change or in the sense of an o.-iginal substance which changes (allmwmc;) or in the sellS<" of an original clement which masks itself through its emanations. Rather we will view the entire range which binds lire, sea, earth, and breath of fire in connection with life and death. Apparently, we revert to anthropological fragments in opposition to cosmological fragments. In truth, however, it is nut a question of a restriction to human phenomena; rather, what pertains to being human, such as life

XI

and death,_ ~omes in a distinctive sense the clue for understanding of the entirety of the opposing relatedness of fv and xc%vta. 1

Again at the end of seminar session eight, Fink summarizes the interpretive struggle with "tQOnTJ [turning] in the following words. We came to no result, and perhaps we will come to no final result at all. But the all too familiar explication ohQOm'J has wandered into the foreignness and darkness of the formula, "to live the death of something." We could · perhaps think the relationship of fire to earth, to air, and to water rather in reference to life and death, so that, with reference to the diffiCult relationship of tension of life and death, we could come to a certain anthropological key for the non-anthropological foundational relatedness of fv and xc%vta. 10

Fink has used precisely the human phenomena of life and death, as well as the relationship between mortals and immortals, in his interpretive attempt to understand the relatedness of fv and "tel xcivta. The present work is a complement to Kirk's book, and partially fulfills, in its main outline, the task left undone by Kirk. The strategy of using the anthropological fragments as a clue for interpreting the cosmological fragments is important in another respect, namely with regard to the previously expressed doubt that, "More is said in the interpretation of the fragments than stands in them." I allude here to Kirk's observation concerning the "synoptic" character of Heraclitus' thinking. Fink's method of employing one set of fragments to interpret another would seem to strengthen the interpretation. Despite many implicit and explicit references to other, later thinkers, Fink's interpretive strategy may allow some assurance that in the long run Heraclitus' thought is interpreted as an integral whole, and is not interpreted by means of reference to a foreign scheme of thought. This translation is not the product of one person working alone. My aim has been to hear the book with two sets of ears, one English and one German, hoping thereby to lose or distort as little as possible of the original. The help of Professor Manfred S. Frings, editor of the German edition of the Colii'Cted Work.~ of Max Srhe!J•r, has been crucial in pursing rhis aim. Because his native tongue is German, he has frequently been lht· needed supplement that allowed retrieval of nuances that would orhnwise have heen lost. I remain indebted to him, and thankful for his st·nrence-by-sentence reading of the text. Orher people have been consult ·d regarding various portions of the rnanusnipl. .John Cody of the Classics department of Northwestern l'niversity has read the manuscript with a concern for correcting my gloss of Greek words and translalion of Greek phrases. The book has surely benefitted from his checking of my Greek ''homework." F. Joseph

xii Smith was consulted on points of particular difficulty, and he has read some of the chapters in their entirety. The advice and encouragement of these men are greatly appreciated. Ultimately, however, I am alone responsible for this translation and for any defects it may contain. All footnotes of the original book are retained in the present translation. Footnotes of the translator are followed by "(Tr.)." To facilitate access to the text, the first occunence of each Greek work is accompanied by an English gloss within square brackets, provided none is given by the authors. A glossary of Greek terms is at the back of the book. A page guide conelating the page numbers of this translation and those of the German edition is also provided. Winnetka, Illinois

CHARLES

H . .SEIBERT

PREFACE TO THE GERMAN EDITION In the Winter Semester of 1966/67, a Heraclitus seminar was held at the University of Freiburg i. Br., organized mutually by Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink. The summary text of the seminar is herewith submitted. It was planned to continue the interpretation over a series of semesters, but this plan cannot be realized. The present publication is a torso, a fragment concerning fragments. Freiburg im Breisgau Aprill970

EUGEN FINK

HERACLITUS

1 Mode of Procedure.-Beginning with Fragment 64 (Correlated Fragments: 41, 1, 50, 4 7).

FINK: I open the seminar with hearty thanks to Professor Heidegger for his readiness to assume spiritual leadership in our common attempt to advance into the area of the great and historically important thinker Heraclitus. Heraclitus' voice, like that of Python, reaches us over a thousand years. Although this thinker lived at the origin of the West, and to that extent is longest past, we have not overtaken him even now. From Martin Heidegger's dialogue with the Greeks, in many of his writings, we can learn how the ft~rthest becomes near and the most familiar becomes strange, and how we remain restless and are unable to rely on a sure interpretation of the Greeks. For us, the Greeks signify an enormous challenge. Our seminar should be an exercise in thinking, that is, in reflection on the thoughts anticipated by Heraclitus. Confronted with his texts, left to us only as fragments, we are not so much concerned with the philological problematic, as important as it might be, 1 as with advancing into the matter itself, that is, toward the matter that must have stood before Heraclitus' spiritual view. This matter is not simply on hand like a result or like some spoken tradition; rather, it can be opened up or blocked from view precisely through the spoken tradition. It is not correct to view the matter of philosophy, particularly the matter of thinking as Martin Heidegger has fonnulated it, as a product lying before us. The matter of thinking does not lie somewhere before us like a land of truth into which one can advance; it is not a thing that we can discover and uncover. The reality of, and the appropriate manner of access to, the matter of thinking is still dark for us. We are still seeking the matter of thinking of the thinker Heraclitus, and we are therefore a little like the poor man who has forgotten where the road leads. Our seminar is not concerned with a spectacular business. It is concerned, however, with serious-minded work. Our common attempt at reflection will not be free from certain disappointments and defeats. Nevertheless, reading the text of the ancient thinker, we make the attempt to come into the spiritual movement that releases us to the matter that merits being named the matter of thinking. Professor Heidegger is in agreement that I should first advance a preliminary interpretation of the sayings of Heraclitus. This interpretation will give our discussion a basis and a starting place for a critical

4

surpassing or even destruction, and it will enable us to establish a certain common ground appropriate to inquiring discourse. Perhaps a preview of the particular language of Heraclitus' sayings is premature before we have read and interpreted them individually. The language of Heraclitus has an inner ambiguity and multidimensionality, so that we cannot give it any unambiguous reference. It moves from gnomic, sentential, and ambiguous-sounding expression to an extreme flight of thought. As assigned text in our seminar, we will work with Fragmente thr Vor.wkratwr by Hermann Diels. 2 For our part, we choose another arrangement. This should cast light on an inner coherence of the fragm~nts' meaning, but without pretending to reconstruct the original form of Heraclitus' lost writing, nEQL qnJOEOOS [On Nature). We shall attempt to trace a thread throughout the multiplicity of his sayings in the hope that a certain track can thereby show itself. Whether our arrangement of the fragments is better than that adopted by Diels is a question that should remain unsettled. Without further preliminary considerations, we shall proceed directly to the midst of the matter, beginning our interpretation with Fr. 64: 'tel bt ml.vta olax(~EL XEQQuv6s. This sentence is clearly intelligible to everyone in what it appears to mean. Whether it is also intelligible in what this meaning concerns, however, is another question. But first, we ask what this sentence means. As soon as we reflect on it somewhat more, we immediately depart from the easy intelligibility and apparent familiarity of the sentence. Diels' translation reads: "Lightning steers the universe." But is "universe" the fitting translation of 'tel xcivta? After due deliberation, one can indeed come to equate 'tel xcivta and "universe." But first of all, 'tel xavta names "everything" and signifies: all things, all of what is. Heraclitus speaks of 'tel xavta vis-a-vis KEQQuv6s [lightning). In so doing, he enunciates a connection between many things and the one of lightning. In the lightning bolt the many, in the sense of "everything," flash up, whereby "everything" is a plural. If we first ask naively about 'tel xcl.vta, we are dealing with a quintessential relatedness. If we translate 'tU xavta as "all things," we must first ask, what kinds of things there are. At the outset, we choose the way of a certain tactical naivete. On the one hand, we take the concept of thing in a wider sense, and then we mean all that is. On the other hand, we also use it in a narrower sense. If we mean things in the narrower sense, then we can distinguish between such things as are from nature (qnJOEL 6vta) and such as are the product of human technics ('tEXVTJ 6vta). With all the things of nature-with the inanimate, like stone, and with the living, like plant, beast, and human (in so far as we may speak of a human as a thin g)--we mean only such things as are individuated and have determinate outlines. We have in view the determinate, individual thing that, to be sure, also has a particular, common character in itself, as being of a certain

5 kind. We make the tacit assumption that -raxciVta, in the sense of the many in entirety, forms the entirety of finite bounded things. The stone, for exam pie, is part of a mountain. We can also speak of the mountain as of a thing. Or is it only a linguistic convention to call what has a determinate outline a thing? The stone is found as rubble on the mountain; the mountain belongs in the mountain range; the latter on the earth's crust; and the earth itself as a great thing that belongs, as a gravitational center, in our solar system. HEIDEGGER: To begin, wouldn't it perhaps be appropriate to ask whether Heraclitus also speaks of-raxciVta in other fragments, in order to have a specific clue from him about what he understands by -raxcivta? In this way we get closer to Heraclitus. That is one question. The second question I would like to put under discussion is what lightning has to do with -raxcivta. We must ask concretely what it can mean when Heraclitus says that lightning ~-te~rs -raxcivta. Can lightning steer the universe at all? PARTICIPANT: If we begin by taking lightning only as a phenomenon, then we must wonder that it should steer the universe, since lightning as a phenomenal entity, as a sensuously perceptible, luminous appearance, still belongs together with all other entities in the universe. HEIDEGGER: We must bring lightning into connection with th~ phenomenon of nature, if we wish to understand it "in Greek." ' FINK: Lightning, regarded as a phenomenon of nature, means the outbreak of the shining lightning-flash in the dark of night. Just as lightning in the night momentarily flashes up and, in the brightness of the gleam, shows things in their articulated outline, so lightning in a deeper sense brings to light the multiple things in their articulated gathering. HEIDEGGER: I remember an afternoon during my journey in Aegina. Suddenly I saw a single bolt of lightning, after which no more followed. My thought was: Zeus. Our task now consists in looking with Heraclitus for what "tel :n:ciVta means. It is an open question how far a distinction was already possible with him between "everything" in the sense of the sum of individuals and ··everything" in the meaning of the embracing allness. The other task, which is first posed for us by Fr. 64, is the connection between -raxcivta and lightning. We must also bring Heraclitus' lightning into connection with fire (xiiQ). It is also essential to observe who has handed Fr. 64 down to us. It is the Church Father Hippolytus who died roughtly A.D. 236/37. From Heraclitus' time approximately eight hundred years pass before our fragment is cited by Hippolytus. In the context, xiiQ and x60J.&O~ !cosmos] are also mentioned. But we do not wish to enter here into the philological problematic that emerges in view of the connection of the fragment and the context of Hippolytus. In a conversation that I held

6 with Carl Reinhardt in 1941, when he stayed here in Freiburg, I spoke to him about the middle ground between pure philology, which intends to find the real Heraclitus with its philological tools, and the kind of philosophizing that consists in thinking without discipline and thereby assuming too much. Between these two extremes there is a middle ground concerned with the role of the transmission of understanding, of sense as well as interpretation. With Hippolytus we find not only miQ but also bc.mJQ6v, bdcnao6aL yvW!J.T)V, 6dTJ bc.uPtQVTJaE :n:civta bul :n:avtrov. Diels translates: "The wise is one thing only, to understand the thoughts that steer everything through everything." Literally translated, :n:avta bu1 :n:civtoov means: everything throughout everything. The importance of this saying lies, on the one hand, in fv 'tO oocp6v [the wise is one thing only] and, on the other, in :n:civta bul :n:avtrov. Here above all we must take into view the connection of the beginning and the end of the sentence. FINK: There is a similar connection, on the one hand between the oneness of the lightning-flash, in the brightness of which the many show themselves in their outline and their articulations, and 'ti:t :n:avta, and, on the other, between the oneness of oocp6v [the wise] and :n:avta bul :n:avtrov. As KEQauv6c; relates to 'tel :n:aV'ta, fv 'to aocp6v relates analogously to :n:civta bLel :n:avtoov. HEIDEGGER: I certainly grant that lightning and fv 'tO oocp6v stand in a relation to one another. But there is still more to notice in Fr. 41. In Fr. 64 Heraclitus speaks oftel :n:civta, in Fr. 41 of :n:civta bLel :n:avtrov. In Parmenides 1/32 we also find a similar phrase: bLel :n:civtoc; :n:civta :rtEQWvta. In the phrase :n:avta bLel :n:avruv, the meaning of bLa is above all to be questioned. To begin, it means "throughout." But how should we understand "throughout:" topographically, spatially, causally, or how else? FINK: In Fr. 64 ta :n:avta does not mean a calm, static multiplicity, but rather a dynamic multiplicity of entities. In tel :n:avta a kind of movement is thought precisely in the reference back to lightning. In the brightness, specifically the clearing which the lightning bolt tears open, tel :n:avta flash up and step into appearance. The being moved of tel :n:aV'ta is also thought in the lighting up of entities in the clearing of lightning. HEIDEGGER: At first, let us leave aside words like "clearing" and "brightness."

7 FINK: If I have spoken of movement, we must distinguish, on the one hand between the movement that lies in the lighting of lightning, in the outbreak of brightness, and on the other hand, the movement in 'ta n:avta, in things. The movement of brightness of lightning corresponds to the movement that goes out from fv 'tO oocp6v and continues on in the many things in entirety. Things are not blocks at rest; rather, they are diversified in movement. HEIDEGGER: 'ta n:avta are thus not a whole, present in front of us, but entities in movement. On the other hand, movement does not occur as x(VT)aLc; [motion] in Heraclitus. fiNK: If movement does not also belong among the fundamental words in Heraclitus, it still always stands in the horizon of problems of his thinking. HEIDEGGER: To Frs. 64 and 41, we now add Fr. 1: 'toil 6£ Myou 1:ou6' Mvtoc; it£( Ql;l1v£'toL y(vovtaL lrv8QWXOL xat :n:Q6oeEV i\ itxouoaL xal axouaavtEc; 'tO :rtQJ.&E:VoL xal btt(I)'V xalfQY(I)'V 'tOLOm(I)'V, 6xo((I)'V tyro 6LTJYEUJWL XQ'tQ :rtouc; Mrv9clvEL 6x6oa tyEQ9ME<; :rtoLoUOLV, 6XOKm£Q 6x6aa EubovtEc; btt.Aav9aVovtat. 3 At first, only yLvoJAfvmv yaQ :n:avt(I)'V xma 'tOv )..{yyov 1:6v6E interests us. We translate, "For although everything happens according to this ).6yoc; [reason, speech, word]." If Heraclitus speaks here of YLVOfUv(I)'V [coming into being], he is, nevertheless, talking of movement. fiNK: In yLvo!Jiv(I)'V y«Q :rt6:vt(I)'V [coming into being of everything], we are dealing with things being moved within the cosmos, and not with the movement that issues from A.6yoc;. HEIDEGGER: YLVOJA.tv(I)'V belongs to ytvEOL<; [genesis). When the Bible speaks of ytvEaLc;, it means by this the Creation, in which things are brought into existence. But what does ytvEOLc; signify in Greek? PARTICIPANT: ytvEatc; is also no concept in Heraclitus. HEJDEGGER: Since when do we have concepts at all? PARTICIPANT: Only since Plato and Aristotle. We even have the first philosophical dictionary with Aristotle. HEJDEGGER: While Plato manages to deal with concepts only with difficulty, we see that Aristotle deals with them more easily. The word YLVOjltv(l)V stands in a fundamental place in Fr. I. FINK: Perhaps we can add a comment to our discussion. We find YEvEOll; in an easily understood sense with living beings, phenomenally seen. Plants spring up from seeds, beasts from the pairing of parents, and humans from sexual union between man and woman. ytvEaLc; is also native to the phenomenal region of the vegetative-animal. Coming into existence (y£yvEa9aL) in this region is at the same time coupled with passing away (q>8dQEa9aL). If we now refer ytvEOLc; also to the region of

8 lifeless things, we operate with an expanded, more general, sense of this word. For if we refer ytvEatc; to -.:a xavta, we expand the sense of ytvEaLc; beyond the phenomenal region in which the genesisphenomenon is otherwise at home. HEIDEGGER: What you understand by the phenomenal sense of the word ytvEaLc; we can also label as ontic. FINK: We also meet the widening of the original, phenomenal meaning ofytvEaLc; in common language, for example, when we speak of the world's coming into existence. We use specific images and domains of ideas in our representations. With YLVOJAEv(I)'V, in Fr. 1, we are concerned with the more general sense of ytvEaLc;. For "tel xavta does not come into existence like that entity which comes into existence in accordance with ytvEaLc; in the narrower sense, and also not like living beings. It is another matter when, in the coming-into-existence of things, manufacture and production (l:EXVTJ and m>LT)atc;) are also meant. The ooLT)mc; of phenomena is, however, something other than the ytvEmc;. The jug does not come into existence by means of the potter's hand like the man is begotten by parents. HEIDEGGER: Let us once again clarify for oursevles what our task is. We ask: what does "tel xavta mean in Fr. 64; and xcivta 6Lc1 xavt(I)'V in Fr. 41; and YLVOJAEv(I)'V YOe XQvt(I)'V in Fr. 1? Xa"tel "tOV Myov [according to the Logos] in Fr. I corresponds with fv 1:0 aoq>Ov in Fr. 41 and XEQ hut to the Logos (A.6yoc;), it is wise to say that everything is one." Before all else, this saying centers on fv, xavta, and 6!J.OAoYELV.

9

FINK: If we now start out from coming-forth, coming-forth-toappearance [Zum-Vorschein-Kommen], wherein you see the Greek meaning of ywo~(I)V as thought in ytvEm~. then we also have a reference to the brightness and gleam of lightning in which the individual thing stands and flashes up. Then we would have the following analogical correlation: as lightning on a dark night lets us see everything individual in its specific outline all at once, so this would be in a short time span the same as that which happens perpetually in nUQ ad~(I)()'V [ever-living fire] in Fr. 30. The entry of entities in their determinateness is thought in the i moment of brightness. Out of Fr. 64 comes t:ax«vta; out of Fr. 41 comes x«vta lu.clxavt(I)V; and out of Fr. l, yLvO~(I)V XQV't(I)V xat:a 'tOv i..Oyov. Earlier we tried to discern the movement of lighting in the lightning bolt. Now we can say that it is the movement of bringing-forth-toappearance. But bringing-forth-to-appearance, which lightning accomplishes in entities, is also a steering intervention in the moving of things themselves. Things are moved in the manner of advancing and receding, waxing and waning, of local movement and alteration. The movement of lightning corresponds to the moving of ho 'tO ao6v, which effects bringing-forth-to-appearance and continues to effect things. The movement of steering intervention in the moving of things happens in accord with the ~- The movement of things that stand in the brightness of lightning has a wisdomlike nature that must, however, be distinguished from the movement that issues itself from aoq>Ov. Fr. 41 does not concern itself only with the relatedness of the one and the many that appear in the one, but also with the efficacy of the one in reference to t:ax«vta, which comes to expression inltavta OLC1xaV't(I)V. It could be that ).6yo~ in Fr. I is another word for ao
10 PARTICIPANT: The relationship of the lightning movement and the movement of entities is no relationship of effect. When it was said that the lightning movement that brings-forth-to-appearance passes into the movement of things, no causal relationship is intended between the movement that brings-forth and the movement of what is brought-forth. Rather, that which stands here in the problem-horizon is the difference between movement in being and movement in entities, specifically between movement in unconcealing and movement in what is unconcealed. FINK: We distinguish the lightning outbreak of light, as movement of bringing-forth, and the coming-forth in it of every specifac entity in its movement. The instantaneousness of lightning is an indication of an impermanence. We must understand lightning as the briefest time, precisely as the instantaneousness that is a symbol for the movement of bringing-forth, not itself in time but allowing time. HEIDEGGER: Isn't lightning eternal, and not merely momentary? FINK: The problem of the movement that brings-forth, in its relationship to the movement of what is brought-forth, we must think in the nexus of lightning, sun, fire, and also the seasons, in which time is thought. The fiery with Heraclitus must be thought in more aspects, for example, the fire in the sun and the transformations of fire (3tuQ()c; 'tQt:ma£). Fire, which underlies everything, is the bringing-forth that withdraws itself in its transformations as that which is brought-forth. I would like to bring m1vta bLil 3tClvt01V in Fr. 41 into connection with xuQ()c; 'tQ03ta£. Lightning is the sudden burst of light in the dark of night. If now the lightning is perpetual, it is a symbol for the movement of bringing-forth. HEIDEGGER: Are you opposed to an identification of lightning, fire, and also war? FINK: No, but the identification here is one of identity and nonidentity. HEIDEGGER: We must then understand identity as belongingtogether. fiNK: Lightning, fire, sun, war, Myoc;, and oocp6v are different lines of thinking on one and the same ground. In xuQ()c; 'tQ03tai. the ground of everything is thought, which, changing itself over, shifts into water and earth. HEIDEGGER: Thus, you mean the transformations of things with respect to one ground. FINK: The ground meant here is not some substance or the absolute, but light and time. HEIDt:GGt:K: If we now stay with our source material and especially with the question concerning bu1 in Fr. 41, can't we then determine bta from steering (olax£l;nv)? What does steering mean?

11 FINK: One can also subsume steering under movement. But with Heraclitus, the steering of lightning is that which stands face to face with all movement in entities like the lightning stands face to face with that which shows itself in its light. Thus, steering does not have the character of being moved like entities, but rather the character of bringing movement forth in entities. Add to this that steering, which concerns "tel :rtaV"ta, is no steering of individual things, but of the quintessential whole of entities. The phenomenon of steering a ship is only a jumping off place for the thought which thinks the bringing-forth of the whole of entities in the articulate jointed-whole. As the captain, in the movement of the sea and winds to which the ship is exposed, brings a course to the movement of the ship, so the steering bringing-forth-to-appearance of lightning gives to all entities not only their outline but also their thrust. The steering bringing-forth-to-appearance is the more original movement that brings to light the whole of entities in their manifold being moved and at the same time withdraws into it. HEIDEGGER: Can one bring the steering of Fr. 64 (olax(~EL) and of Fr. 41 (hu~tQVJIOE) into association with 6..0? If so, what then results as the meaning of 6..0? fiNK: In 6ta a transitive moment is thought. HEIDEGGER: What meaning does "everything throughout everything" now have? FINK: I would like to bring :rtavta 6ta :rtclV"t(l)V into association with :rtuQ<)c; "tQO:rta£. The transformations of fire then imply that everything goes over into everything; so that nothing retains the defmiteness of its character but, following an indiscernable wisdom, moves itself throughout by opposites. HEJDEGGER: But why does Heraclitus then speak of steering? fiNK: The transformations of fire are in some measure a circular movement that gets steered by lightning, specifically by ooq>Ov. The movement, in which everything moves throughout everything through opposites, gets guided. I Ht:JDEGGER: But may we here speak of opposites or of dialectic at all? Heraclitus knows neither something of opposites nor of dialectic. fiNK: True, opposites are not thematic with Heraclitus. But on the other hand, it cannot be contested that from the phenomenon he points to opposites. The movement in which everything is transformed throughout everything is a steered movement. For Plato, the helm is the analogy for exhibiting the power of rationality in the world. Ht:JDEGGER: You wish to illustrate what steering means by naming that which steers, the Myoc;. But what is steering as a phenomenon? FINK: Steering as a phenomenon is the movement of a human who, ror example, brings a ship into a desired course. It is the directing of movement which a rational human pursues.

12

HEIDEGGER: In the experiment which we undertake, there is no question of wanting to conjure up Heraclitus himself. Rather, he speaks with us and we speak with him. At present, we reflect on the phenomenon of steering. This phenomenon has today, in the age of cybernetics, become so fundamental that it occupies and determines the whole of natural science and the behavior of humans so that it is necessary for us to gain more clarity about it. You said first that steering means "bringing something into a desired course." Let us attempt a still more precise description of the phenomenon. FINK: Steering is the bringing-into-control [In-die Gewalt-Bringen] of a movement. A ship without rudder and helmsman is a plaything of the waves and winds. It is forcibly brought into the desired course only through steering. Steering is an intervening, transfiguring movement that compells the ship along a specific course. It has the character of violence in itself. Aristotle distinguishes the movement that is native to things and the movement that is forcibly conveyed to things. HEIDEGGER: Isn't there also a nonviolent steering? Does the character of violence belong intrinsically to the phenomenon of steering? The phenomenon of steering is ever and again unclarified in reference to Heraclitus and to our present-day distress. That natural science and our life today become ruled by cybernetics in increasing measure is not accidental; rather, it is foreshadowed in the historical origin of modem knowledge and technology. FINK: The human phenomenon of steering is characterized by the moment of coercive and precalculated regulation. It is associated with calculative knowledge and coercive intervention. The steering of Zeus is something else. When he steers he does not calculate, but he rules effortlessly. There tends to be noncoercive steering in the region of the gods, but not in the human region. HEIDEGGER: Is there really an essential connection between steering and coercion? FINK: The helmsman of a ship is a man of skill. He knows his way about in the tides and winds. He must make use of the driving wind and tide in correct manner. Through his steering he removes the ship coercively from the play of wind and waves. To this extent one must thus see and also posit the moment of coercive acts in the phenomenon of steermg. HEIDEGGER: Isn't present day cybernetics itself also steered? FINK: If one would think of Elll«Q~Jivll [destiny] in this, or even fate. HEIDEGGER: Isn't this steering noncoercive? We must look at various phenomena of steering. Steering can be, on the one hand, a coercive holding in line, on the other hand, the noncoercive steering of the gods. The gorls of the Greeks, however, have nothing to do with religion.

13

The Greeks did not have faith in their gods. There is-to recall Wilamowitz-no faith of the Hellenes. FINK: However, the Greeks had myth. HEIDEGGER: Nevertheless, myth is something other than faith.But to come back to noncoercive steering, we could ask how things stand with genetics. Would you also speak of a coercive steering there? FINK: Here one must distinguish between the natural behavior of genes, which can be interpreted cybernetically, on the one hand, and the manipulation of factors of inheritance, on the other. HEIDEGGER: Would you speak of coercion here? FINK: Even if coercion is not felt by the one overpowered, it is still coercion. Because one can today coercively intervene and alter the behavior of genes, it is possible that one day the world will be ruled by druggists. HEIDEGGER: Regarding genes, the geneticist speaks of an alphabet, of a store of information, which stores up in itself a definite quantity of information. Does one think of coercion in this information theory? FINK: The genes that we discover are a biological fmding. However, as soon as one comes to the thought of wanting to improve the human race through an altering steering of genes, it is thereby not a question of! compulsion which brings pain, but indeed a question of coercion. HEJDEGGER: Thus, we must make a two-fold distinction: on the one hand, the information-theoretical interpretation of the biological; and on the other, the attempt, grounded on the former, to actively steer. What is in question is whether the concept of coercive steering is in place in cybernetic biology. FINK: Taken strictly, one cannot speak here of steering. HEJDEGGER: At issue is whether an ambiguity presents itself in the concept of information. FINK: Genes exhibit a determinate stamping and have, thereby, the character of a lasting stock [Langspeichem]. A human lives his life, which he apparently spends as a free being, through genetic conditioning. Everyone is determined by his ancestors. One also speaks of the learning ability of genes, which can learn like a computer. HEJDEGGER: But how do things stand with the concept of informal ion? FINK: By the concept of information one understands, on one hand, infonnare, the stamping, impressing of form; and on the other, a ll'<·hnique of communication. HEIDEGGER: If genes determine human behavior, do they develop the information that is innate to them? FINK: In some measure. As to information, we are not dealing here with the kind of information that one picks up. What is meant here is

14

that he behaves as if he were to get a command from the genetic stock. From this point of view, freedom is planned freedom. HEIDEGGER: Information thus implies, on the one hand, the stamping and, on the other, information-giving, upon which the informed being reacts. The human mode of behavior becomes formalized through cybernetic biology, and the entire causal structure becomes converted. We need no philosophy of nature; it suffices, rather, if we clarify for ourselves where cybernetics comes from and where it leads to. The general charge, that philosophy understands nothing of natural science and always limps along behind it, we can take without being perturbed. It is important for us to say to natural scientists what they are, in effect, doing. We now have seen a multitude of aspects in the phenomenon of steering. K£QQUV6~, lv, oo
2 Hermeneutical Circle.-Relatedness of fv and m1vta (Correlated Fragments: 1, 7, 80, 10, 29, 30, 41, 53, 90, 100, 102, 108, 114).

FINK: As a result of Fr. 64, we are driven to the difficulty of elucidating the expression 'tel :rtcivta. I intentionally do not speak of the concept of 'tel :rte1vta in order to avoid the idea of a Heraclitean technical vocabulary. The expression 'tel :rtcivta has shown itself to us in Fr. 64 as that on which lightning comes to bear in a steering way. Lightning, as the opening light, as instantaneous fire, brings 'tel :rtavta to light, outlines each thing in its form, and guides the movement, change, and passage of all which belongs in 'tel :rtavta. In order to focus more sharply the question of what or who 'tel :rtcivta are, whether individual things or elements or counterreferences, we began with a preliminary look at other fragments that also name 'tel :rtavta. If we disregard what we have already brought into relation to Fr. 64, fifteen text citations follow in which we wish to examine how far, that is, in what respects 'tel :rtcivta are addressed. In Fr. 64 it has been indicated that lightning is the steerer. It is not a question of an immanent self-regulation of :rtcivta. We must distinguish lightning as the one from the quintessential many of :rtcivta. PARTICIPANT: If the steering principle does not lie within the whole, must it be found outside or above the whole? But how can it be outside the whole? FINK: If we press it, the concept of the whole means a quintessence that allows nothing outside itself; thus, it apparently does not allow what you call the steering principle. But with Heraclitus, it is a question of a counterreference, at present still not discernible by us, between the f:v of lightning and 'tel :rtavta, which are torn open, steered, and guided by lightning. As a formal logical quintessence 'tel :rtavta signifies a concept of "everything," which allows nothing outside itself. It is, nevertheless, questionable whether the steering is something external to 'tel :rtavta at all. Here a very peculiar relatedness lies before us, which cannot be expressed at all with current relationship-categories. The relatedness in ~tuestion, between the lightning that guides 'tel :rtcivta and 'tel :rtavta itself, ts the relatedness of one to many. It is not, however, the relationship of the singular to the plural, but the relatedness of a still unclarified one to the many in the one, whereby the many are meant in the sense of quintessence. Ht:rm:GGJ::R: Why do you reject Dids' translation of 'ta :rtavta as "niverse?

16

FINK: If, in Fr. 64, 'tO nciv [the whole] were to stand in place of 'tel JtclV'ta, it would be justifiable to translate with "universe." 'tel nclV'ta do not form the universe; rather, they form the quintessence of things found in the world. The universe is not 'tel nclV'ta; rather, lightning itself is world-forming. In the gleam of lightning, the many things in entirety come into differentiated appearance. 'tel n6.vta is the realm of differences. Lightning as ~. however, is not contrasted with 'tel nclV'ta as one neighborhood against another or as cold against warm. HEIDEGGER: On your interpretation, are lightning and universe thus the same? FINK: I would like to formulate it otherwise. Lightning is not the universe, but it is as the world-forming. It is only as world-form. What is to be understood here by world-form must be elucidated more precisely. HEIDEGGER: I myself would like to add a supplement to what I explained during the last session concerning cybernetics. I don't want to allow a misunderstanding to arise from my allusion to modern cybernetics in the course of the discussion about what steering is. Misunderstanding would arise if we restricted ourselves to what is said about steering in Frs. 64 and 41, and if we constructed a connection between Heraclitus and cybernetics. This connection between Heraclitus and cybernetics lies much deeper hidden and is not so easy to grasp. It goes in another direction that we could not discuss in the context of our present awareness of Heraclitus. Nevertheless, the meaning of cybernetics lies in the origin of that which prepares itself here with Heraclitus in the relatedness of ~ and 'tel n6.vta. FINK: If we now make the attempt to look at how 'tel JtclV'ta is mentioned in other fragments, we still intend no explication of the separate fragments. HEIDEGGER: If I have postponed a question put by one of the participants, it has happened under the constraint of a fundamental difficulty in which we now find ourselves. Wherein lies this difficulty? PARTICIPANT: The questions thus far touched on can only be answered when we have won a deeper understanding of what our considerations have referred to up to now. But above all: we are supposed to know at the very beginning, as well as after consideration of a fragment, what 'tel JtaV'ta means. However, we can understand the meaning of 'tel JtclV'ta only in the context of all the fragments in which 'tel JtclV'ta is mentioned. On the other hand, we can work out the contextual whole only through a step-by-step procedure through individual fragments, which already presupposes a prior understanding of what is meant by 'tel JtaV'ta. The basic difficulty before which we stand is, therefore, the hermeneutical <·ircle. Hum::c;t:R: Can we get out of this circle? FINK: Mustn't we rather enter into this circle.

17

HEIDEGGER: Wittgenstein says the following. The difficulty in which thinking stands compares with a man in a room, from which he wants to get out. At first, he attempts to get out through the window, but it is too high for him. Then he attempts to get out through the chimney, which is too narrow for him. If he simply turned around, he would see that the door was open all along. We ourselves are permanently set in motion and caught in the hermeneutical circle. Our difficulty now consists in the fact that we search for a clue about the meaning of 'tel :rtc1vta in central Heraclitean fragments without having already involved ourselves in a detailed interpretation. For this reason our search for the meaning of Heraclitus' 'tel :rtclvta must also remain provisional. PARTICIPANT: If we attempt to make clear to ourselves the meaning of 'tel :rtavta starting from a fragment, can't we revert to Fr. 50 in which it is said, "Everything is one?" HEIDEGGER: But everything we have of Heraclitus' fragments is not the whole, is not the whole Heraclitus. FINK: I don't imagine that one can jump at Heraclitus' obscure saying as a maxim for interpretation. Likewise, we cannot appeal to Fr. 60, which says that the way up and the way down are one and the same, for an understanding of what a way is, for instance, a way in philosophy or a way through the fragments of Heraclitus. Here Heraclitus does not express the customary understanding of way. It also pertains to the hermeneutical difficulty mentioned by us that each fragment remains fragmentary in its explication, and in connection with all other fragments, it does not yield the whole of Heraclitus' thought. HEIDEGGER: In the course of our seminar we must make the attempt to come through interpretation into the dimension required by Heraclitus. Indeed, the question emerges how far we implicitly or explicitly interpret, that is, how far we can make the dimensions of Heraclitus visible from out of our thought. Philosophy can only speak and say, but it cannot paint pictures. FINK: Perhaps also it can never even point out. Ht:aDEGGER: There is an old Chinese proverb that runs, "Once pointed out is better than a hundred times said." To the contrary, philosophy is obligated to point out precisely through saying. FINK: We begin with the passages in which :rtavta are mentioned in order to look at how :rtclvta are spoken of. We begin with Fr. I, which has already concerned us. The phrase which alone now interests us runs: YLVOilfVWv yaQ :rtavtwv xa'ta 'tov A.Oyov. We ask in what respect :rtavta are mentioned. :rtavta are designated as YLVOIJ.£Va. But what does that mean? If we conceive y(yvEo6aL narrowly, it means the coming-forth, the burgeoning of a living being from another. But in order to understand the extent to which :rtavta are YLVO!l£Va in Fr. I, we must bear in mind the

18

xatel tOv Myov. xavta are moved in accord with A.Oyoc;. ytv6J.LEVa xc1vta at the same time stand in a relationship to humans who become uncomprehending (Q!;Uv£tOL y(vovtaL civ6QOmoL), who do not understand the 'UJyoc; in accord with which xavta happen and are moved. HEIDEGGER: Let us also include among xatel tbv ),,yCYV the t6v6E. FINK: The demonstrative t6v6E means: in accord with this wyoc;, which then is discussed in what follows. PARTICIPANT: Isn't it more appropriate to translate ai;Uv£tOL ytvOvtaL not with "becoming uncomprehending," but with "prove to be uncomprehending"? FINK: When I translate y(vOvtaL with "become," and put it in a relationship to YLVO~(I)'V yciQ Xclvt(I)'V, I understand by it only a colorless becoming. HEIDEGGER: The beginning of our consideration was Fr. 64, in which we view the relatedness of steering lightning to tel xavta, that is, the relatedness of b and xavta. Further fragments should now show us in what manner and in what respects this relatedness is mentioned. FINK: In Fr. I, in which xc1vta are spoken of as moved, their movement is related to Myoc;. In the same fragment, the relationship of humans to Afryoc; is also mentioned in so far as humans do not understand the Myoc; in its moving relatedness to the moved xc1vta. From Fr. I, I would like to move to Fr. 7: d xavta tel bvta xamoc; YEvOLtO, QLVE«; civ 6tayvoiEv. 4 In what manner are xavta spoken of here? Do 6vta [things that actually exist] elucidate xavta or is xavta meant as an indeterminate number of a quintessential kind, so that we must translate: every t'Svta? I believe that ttc1vta are understood here as distinction. HEIDEGGER: That they are distinct emerges from btayvoiEV [would discriminate]. FINK: In Fr. 7, a familiar phenomenon is mentioned, a phenomenon which disguises differences, namely, smoke. In smoke, to be sure, distinctions become ellusive, but it does not eliminate those distinctions which become evident in btayvoiEV. Above all, the moment of being distinct is to be noticed in the word combination xavta ta t'Svta. HEJDEGGER: How is xavta thus to be comprehended? fiNK: xavta ta <'Svta does not mean an enumeration of <'Svta and does not signify "all which is," but the xavta which are, are set off from one another, are distinguished. xavta, collectively as 6vta, are the correlate of a blayvwatc; [diagnosis]. The diagnostic character of a distinguishing is sharpened in regard to smoke as a distinction-obscuring phenomenon. Thus, :ru1vta in Fr. 7 are viewed as distinct. HEmt:GGt:R: What information concerning navta does Fr. 7 give us vis-a-vis Fr. I? FINK: In Fr. 7, the emphasis lies on the distinctness, on the imli-

19 viduality of :rtavta that, in Fr. 1, are spoken of as moved, and moved, that is, in accord with the Myo~. HEIDEGGER: Following the overall sense of Fr. 7, :rtcivta are thus related to yvrocn~ [inquiry], to grasping humans. FINK: yvoL~ of :rtavta to A.6yo~? HEIDEGGER: You assume too much thereby. You pursue the connection between human yvro
20

are referred not to Myoc;, but to strife. In Fr. 80, xc1vra enter into a context of meaning with strife. It is reminiscent of x6A.E!J.Oc;-Fr. 53, to which we will yet turn.-From Fr. 10, we single out the phrase: tx Xclvt(I)'V fv xat t!; tvoc; xavta. 8 Here also we meet with a becoming, but not with what is meant by the movement of individual entities; rather, we meet with the becoming of a whole. HEIDEGGER: If we view it naively, how could tx Xclvt(l)'V fv be understood? PARTICIPANT: Read naively it would mean that a whole gets put together out of all the parts. HEJDEGGER: But the second phrase, t!; tvoc; xc1vra, already indicates to us that it is not a question of a relationship of a part and a whole which is composed of parts. FINK: In Frs. 1 and 80, xc1vra yLyv6J1EVa are mentioned. Their being moved was referred on one hand to A.Oyoc; and on the other hand to strife. In accord with A.Oyoc; and strife means: in accord with the movement of A.Oyoc; and strife. We have distinguished this movement from the being moved of xc1vra. It is not the same kind of movement as the movement of xc1vra. In Fr. 10, movement is brought up, but in the sense of how one comes out of everything and everything comes out of one. HEIDEGGER: Which movement do you mean here? FINK: The world-movement. With this, nevertheless, too much has been said. We have noticed that one can understand tx Xclvt(I)'V fv naively as a relationship of part and whole. That one comes out of many is a familiar phenomenon. However, the same thing does not allow expression in reverse manner. Many does not come out of one, unless we mean only bounded allness in the sense of a multiplicity and a set. 'tel xavta is, however, no concept of bounded allness, no concept of set, but a quintessence. We must distinguish the concept of allness, in the sense of quintessence as it is given in 'tel xavta, from the numerical or generic allness, that is, from a concept of relative allness. HEIDEGGER: Do all the books that are arranged here in this room constitute a library? PARTICIPANT: The concept of a library is ambiguous. On one hand, it can mean the entire set of books lying here before us; but on the other hand, it can also mean the equipment other than the books, that is, the room, the shelves, etc. The library is not restricted to the books that belong to it. Also, when some books are taken out, it is still a library. HEIDEGGER: If we take out one book after another, how long does it remain a library? But we see already that all the individual books together do not make up a library." All," understood as summative, is quite different from allness in the sense of the unityof the peculiar sort that is not so easy to specify at first.

21

FINK: In Fr. 10, a relatedness is articulated between navta, in the sense of many in entirety, and the one, and a relatedness of the one to the many in entirety. Here, the one does not mean a part. HEIDEGGER: Our German word Eiru [one] is fatal for the Greek h. To what extent? FINK: In the relatedness of fv and navta, it is not only a matter of a counterreference, but also of a unification. PARTICIPANT: I would like to understand fv as something complex in opposition to a numerical conception. The tension between fv and navta has the character of a complex. FINK: fv is lightning and fire. If one wishes to speak here of a complex, one can do so only if one understands by it an encompassing unity that the many in entirety gather in themselves. HEIDEGGER: We must think fv, the one [das Eine], as the unifying. To be sure, the one can have the meaning of the one and only, but here it has the character of unifying. If one translates the passage in question from Fr. 10, "out of everything, one; and out of one, everything," this is a thoughtless translation. fv is not by itself a one that would have nothing to do with ncivta; rather, it is unifying. FINK: In order to make clear the unifying unity of fv, one can take as a comparison the unity of an element. However, this is not enough; rather, !_he ll_nifyi!lg !Jfl_ity mu~t_ ~-ili()':lg!tt back to the one of lightning.. which, in its gleam, gathe-rs and unifies the many in entirety in their distinctness. HEJDEGGER: fv runs throughout all philosophy till Kant's Transcendental Apperception. You said just now that one had to consider fv in its relatedness to navta, and ncivta in its relatedness to fv in Fr. 10, together with A.6yo~ and strife in its reference to ncivta in Frs. I and 80. However, that is only possible when we understand ).6yo~ as gathering and lQl~ [strife] as dismantling. Fr. 10 begins with the word O'UVU'\lll£~ [contact]. How should we translate this? PARTICIPANT: I would propose: joining-together [Zusammerifiigen]. HEJDEGGER: In this, we would be concerned with the word "together." Accordingly, fv is that which unifies. FINK: Fr. 29 seems at first not to belong in the series of fragments in which navta are mentioned: alQrilvtal y«Q f:v itvtt Wtclvt(l)'V ol(!Qunm, xAio~ Oivaov 9vrrnirv. 7 For here navta are not mentioned directly in a spedfic respect; rather, a human phenomenon is mentioned, specifically, that the noble minded prefer one thing rather than all else, namely everlasting glory rather than transient things. The comportment of the ~oble minded is opposed to that of the nollo(, the many, who lie there hke well-fed cattle. And here, nevertheless, the reference in question of ~v and navta is also to be seen. According to the prima facie meaning, fv Is here the everlasting glory that occupies a special place vis-a-vis all else.

22 But the fragment expresses not only the comportment of the noble minded in reference to glory. Glory is standing in radiance. Radiance, however, reminds us of the light of lightning and fire. Glory relates itself to all other things as radiance to dullness. Fr. 90 also belongs here in so far as it speaks of the relationship of gold and goods. Gold also relates itself to goods as radiance to dullness. HEJDEGGER: Fr. 29 also names the :n:ollo£ next to the aQLO'tOL [the best]. In Fr. I, the :n:ollo£ are compared with the cbtElQOLOLV, with the untried, who are contrasted with £:yw, that is, with Heraclitus. But we may not understand this opposition, as Nietzsche did, as a separation of the prideful from the herd. Heraclitus also mentions one of the seven wise men, Bias, who was born in Priene, and says of him that his reputation is greater than that of others (Fr. 39). Bias has also said: o[ :n:A.Eicrtm av9QW:n:m xaxo£, most men are bad. The many do not strive, like the noble minded, after the radiance of glory; they indulge in transitory things and therefore do not see the one. FtNK: In Fr. 29, we must think of glory in regard to radiance. The radiant is the fiery in opposition to that which the many and the bad prefer. The noble minded, who aspire above all else to glory, stand near the thinker, whose glance is oriented not only to :n:avta, but to b in its rf'latedness to :n:avta. HEJDEGGER: Pindar also connected gold, and thus the radiant, with fire and lightning. The preceding inspection of Fr. 29 has indicated to us that a specific human comportment is at first mentioned. FtNK: In this comportment of the noble minded, the fundamental relatedness of b and :n:avta is mirrored in a certain manner in everlasting glory. Also in Fr. 7, :n:avta stepped into association with human comportment. There, however, it was discerning cognizance. In Ft·. 29, :n:avta are also seen in their reference back to a human comportment. But it is not a question of a knowledge relationship; rather, it is a question of a relationship of preference of one thing over another. Glory, however, is not distinguished by degrees from other possessions; rather, it has the character of distinction in opposition to all other things. It is not a question of preference for one over another, but of preference of the only important matter as against all others. As the noble minded prefer the only important matter, the radiance of glory rather than all otlwr things, so the thinker thinks on the unifying one of lightning, in the light of which :n:avta nnne to appearance, not only about :n:avta. And just as the many prt·fer I ransient things to the radiam·e of glory, so humans, tht· many. do not understand the unifying £v (whkh indudes llUVta in their distinction) hut only the llOVTa, the many things. In Fr. :{0, the f(>Cus of thought is oriented to the relationship of :n:avta and xbot•n:::. The citation which alone is now interesting to us runs: XOOf.LOV tOVb£. tOV autilv a:n:avtwv. Diels translatt·s: "This world-order,

23 the same for all beings." By beings, he evidently understands living beings. We wish, however, to translate Mclvt(I)'V: for the entirety of ruivta. HEIDEGGER: 'tOV au'tov Mclvt(I)'V stands only in Clement of Alexandria, and is missing in Plutarch and Simplicius. Karl Reinhardt strikes it. 1 would like to mention him once again, because I would like to refer to his essay, "Heraklils Lehre vom Feuer" (first published in Hermes 77, 1942, pp. 1-27), which is especially important in methodological respects. 8 It was just thirty years ago, in the period during which I held the three lectures on the origin of the work of art, that I spoke at length with Karl Reinhardt, in his garret, about Heraclitus. At the time, he told me of his plan to write a commentary on Heraclitus with an orientation toward tradition and history. Had he realized his plan, we would be much aided today. Reinhardt had also shown in the aforementioned essay that niiQ cpQOVLf.IOV [sagacious fire], standing in the context of Fr. 64, is genuine and on that account is to be looked at as a fragment of Heraclitus. What the discovery of new Heraclitus fragments implies, he indicated thus: ''An unpleasant outcome results. It is not impossible that with Clement and the Church Fathers a few unknown words of Heraclitus flood about, as though in a great river, which we will never succeed in catching unless we were referred to them from another source. To recognize an importarlt word as important is not always easy." Karl Reinhardt is still with us. FINK: In Fr. 30, the reference of :rtavta and xOOJ.I.O~ is thought. We leave open what WOJ.LO~ means with Heraclitus. Let us look once again at Fr. 41 which has already occupied us: £v 'tO oocp6v, bdataa9at yvWilT(V, 6't£T( ~xu~EQVT(OE :rtavta bta :rtclvt(I)'V. 11 Here oocp6v is added to fv. We have already looked for the relatedness of fv and :rtavta in the fragments. We must ask whether oocp6v is only a property of fv as unifying unity, or whether it is not precisely the essence of fv. HEmt:GGER: Then we could put a colon between fv and oocp6v. fv: oocp<)v. FINK: oocpt)v, as the essence of the unifying fv, grasps £v in its cornplt·te fullness of sense. If fv up till now appears to us to withdraw, we ha\'e in Fr. 41 the first more an·urate characterization as a kind of fvwm~ lunilit·ation), although this nmt·cpt is laden with Neoplatonic meaning. lh:lm:c;c;t:R: £v runs through all of metaphysics; and dialenic is also not to lx.· thought without EV. Ft!'IIK: In Fr. 5:~. to which we have already alluded in n>Jmet·tion with Fr. HO. :rtOV'tU gets plan·d in relationship to :rtOAE!lO~. The fragment has till' following word orckr: no/..q10~ 1TOvtWV !lfV :rtU'tlfQ fO'tl, :rtOvtWV b~· j1umA.n)(_:;. xai m\'~ llFV 8wu~ £bn;£ milf; Or c'.tv8{>W:rtou~. toil~ llfv bo\•AtHI; rrroLT(Of toil~ br £A.n,8£gou~. Diels translates: "War is the father and king of all things. He established some as gods and the others as humans; somt• he made slaves and the others free." The reference of

24 mxvta to ltOAEIJO~ has already indicated itselfto us in Fr. 80, where fQl~ is mentioned. Now war, that is, strife, is named father and king of all things. As the father is the source of children, so is strife, which we must think together with fv as lightning and fire, the source of Jtc:lvta. The connection of ltOAEIJO~ as father to ltclvta repeats itself in a certain way in the relationship of ltOAEJ.lO~ as sovereign to Jtc:lvta. We must bring ~aoU..ru~ [king] into asS<x:iation with the steering and directing of lightning. As lightning tears open the field of ltclvta and works there as the driving and reigning, S<> war as ruler directs and reigns over ltclvta. HEIDEGGER: When he speaks of father and ruler, Heraclitus grasps in an almost poetic speech the sense of the clQXTJ [ultimate prirKiple] of movement: ltQ"tov o8Ev iJ ciQx'iJ 'ti)~ XlvTJOEOO~. The origin of movement is also the origin of ruling and directing. FINK: The phrases ltOAEIJO~ ltclvt(l)'V ltUnlQ and ltclvt(l)'V f3amM:6~ are not only two new images; rather, a new moment in the relatedness of fv and Jtavta comes to speech in them. The way that war is the father of Jtavta is designated in EOEL!;E [established, brought to light]; the way that war is ·king of Jtavta is said in ~l'tOLTJOE [made]. Fr. 90 mentions the reference between Jtavta and the exchange of fire: lt\lQO~ 1:£ nvt<11J0tf3TJ ta ltclvtQ xat ltUQ Mclvt(l)'V. 10 Here lv is addressed by name as fire, as it was formerly designated as lightning. The relationship between fire and ltclvta does not have the character here of bare ytvE<JL~, of bring-about or bringing-fonh (making), but rather the character of exchange. HEIDEGGER: The talk of exchange as the way that fire as fv relates itself to Jtavta has the appearance of a certain leveling. FINK: This appearance is perhaps intended. Fr. 100 offers itself now for consideration. It runs: WQEQOU<Jl "The seasons which bring Jtavta." Till now we have heard of steering and directing, showing and making, and now Heraclitus speaks of a bringing. The hours, that is, the times, bring Jtavta. Therewith, time comes into fv in an express manner. Time was already named in a covert manner in lightning, and is also thought in the seasonal times of fire and in the sun. Jtavta are what is brought by the times. HEIDEGGER: Do you lay more emphasis on time or on bringing? FINK: I am concerned with the very connection between them. But we must still leave open how time and bringing are here to be thought. HEIDEGGt:R: Bringing is an important moment which we must later heed in the question concerning dialectic in OllJ.lCJ>EQOJ.lEVOV [S<>mething that is brought togt·ther] and OtacpEQOJ.lEVOV [something that is brought apart]. FINK: In Fr. 102, Jtav-ta is viewed in a two-fold manner. It runs: t!p J.lfv 8£1!J XaAa ltclVta XQL aya8a Xai. b(xma, aV8QOOltOl bE a J.lEv abtXQ imnA.t'Jcpamv a bE: blxma. Diets translates: "For god everything is beauti-

25 ful. good, and just; but humans have assumed some to be unjust and others to be just." In Fr. 7, navta were related to human grasping. Now Heraclitus speaks not only from the human but also from the divine reference to navta. Everything is beautiful, good, and just for god. Only humans make a distinction between the just and the unjust. The genuine and true view on navta and fv is the divine; the human is ingenuine and deficient. In Fr. 29, we see a similar double relatedness of ncivta and ~. There it was the noble minded who preferred the radiance of glory rather than all else, whereas the many indulged themselves in transient things and did not aspire to everlasting glory. Here it is the divine and the human aspects that are placed in opposition. Fr. 108 names oocpc)v as that which is set apart from everything: ooq>6v EO'tL navtwv XEXWQL~EvOV ... Here oocpc)v is not only a determination of fv as in Fr. 41, but as fv it is that which is set apart from navta. ooq>6v is that which holds itself separated from ncivta, while still encompassing them. Thus, nc1vta are thought from the separation of b. HEJDEGGER: XEA.WQL~ov [set apart] is the most difficult question with Heraclitus. Karl Jaspers says about this word of Heraclitus: "Here the thought of transcendence as absolutely other is reached, and indeed in full awareness of the uniqueness of this thought." (Du grossen PhiloJaphen, Bd. I, S. 634). 12 This interpretation of XEXWQL~ov as transcendence entirely misses the point. FtNK: Again, Fr. 114 provides another reference to 'tel ncivta: l;ilv v6(fl A.tyovtac; laxuQi.tfa8aL xQTI 't rov navtwv, 6xoxmEQ v6J.U!> n6A.Lc;, xai noA.u loxuQO'tEQWc;. 'tQE<povtaL YclQ nclvtEc; ol Ctv9QWltELOL VOJ.IOL uno tvoc; 'toii Odou. We can skip over the last sentence for our present consideration. Diets translates: "If one wants to talk with understanding, one must strengthen himself with what is common to all, like a city with the law, and even more strongly." Here also, ncivta are viewed from a specific human behavior. It cannot be decided at first glance whether only the xmv6v [public realm] of the city is meant by what is common to everything, or whether it does not also refer to ncivta. In the latter case, the fundamental relatedness of~ and navta would reflect itself in the human domain. As the one who wants to talk with understanding must make himself strong with what is common to everything, so must the judicious one make himself strong in a deeper sense with the rv, which is in company with navta. Hut>EGGt:R: After !;uv6v [common] we must put a big question mark, just as we do after XEXWQL~tvov. The question mark, however, means that we must set aside all familiar ideas and ask and reflect. l;uv6v is a separate, complex problem, because here l;uv VO(fl [with mind] comes into play. FINK: Now we have examined in which respect 'ta navta are mentioned in a series of fragments. We have still given no interpretation,

26 therewith. Nevertheless, in passing through the many citations what 1:a TCavta means has not become clearer to us. Rather, the expression 1:a TCavta has become more questionable in reference to the cases exhibited. It has become more questionable to us what TCavta are, what their coming to appearance is, and how the reference of TCavta and ~v must be thought, and where this reference belongs. When we say "questionable" [fraguriirdig], it means that the emerging questions [Fragm] are wm1hy [wilrdig] of being asked. PARTICIPANT: Frs. 50 and 66 also belong in the series of enumerated fragments that treat of TCavta. HEJDEGGER: Fr. 66 is disputed by Clement, whom Karl Reinhardt characterizes as the Greek Isaiah. For Clement sees Heraclitus eschatologically. Again, I emphasize that it would be of inestimable value if Karl Reinhardt's commentary, oriented toward tradition and history, had come down to us. Tru~. Reinhardt was no professional philosopher, but he could think and see.

3 n:avr:a-oM>v, n:avr:a-ovr:a-Different Exposition of Fragment 7 (Correlated Fragment 67). miv EQ1tE'tOV (Fragment II). Maturation Character of the Seasons (Fragment I 00).

HEIDEGGER: Let us look back to the theme of the last seminar. PARTICIPANT: In passage through the fragments in which 'tel nc1vta is mentioned, we attempted to view the respects in which the phrase 'tel n:avta is spoken by Heraclitus. These respects are the reference of nc1vta to wyoc;, to strife, to war as father and king of 1tclvta, to the unifying fv, to xoo110c;. to the exchange of fire, to oocpc)v, to XEXWQLOJ,l£vov, to the seasons, moreover, to the human comportment of discerning cognizance, to the preference for one rather than all else, to strengthening oneself with what is common to all, and to the different divine and human relation to navta. HEIDEGGER: Have we yet extracted what 'tel navta means from these manifold references? PARTICIPANT: Provisionally, we have interpreted 'tel navta as the quintessence of what is individual. HEJDEGGER: But where do you get the individual from? PARTICIPANT: In all the fragments, the view is oriented toward the individual, which is taken together in the quintessence, 'tel n:avta. HEIDEGGER: What does '"individual'" mean in Greek? PARTICIPANT: ~XQO'tOV. HEIDEGGER: In passage through a series of fragments, we have viewed the reference of 'tel navta to fv and that which belongs to hr. But in pursuit of the manifold references in which 'tel nc1vta are mentioned, we are still not successful in characterizing more closely the phrase 'tel m:lvta. 'tel n:avta are also spoken of as distinguished within themselves. How is that to be understood? PARTICIPANT: The entirety or 1tclvtQ can be addressed as 'tO oA.ov. This entirety is the quintessence of self-distinguishing navta. Hum:c;ca:R: But what is the quintesseru~e? Doesn't it mean the who let PARTICIPANT: The quintessence is that which indoscs. lh:mt:c;c;t:R: Is there something like an inclosing quintessence with llnaditus? Obviously not. Quintessence, inclosing, grasping and comprehending is already by itself un-Greek. With Heraclitus, there is no ('oncept. And also with Aristotle, there still are no concepts in the proper sense. When docs the concept arise f(n the first time?

28 PARTICIPANT: When A.Oyo~. specifically the stoic xa'taA'l'Vl~ [direct apprehension], gets translated and understood as nmaptuJ [concept]. HEIDEGGER: To talk of the concept is not Greek. It is not consonant with what we will treat in the next seminar. There we must also deal cautiously with the word "quintessence." FINK: When I speak of quintessence, I would like to lay the emphasis on auv~xov [keep together]. When the participant said that I have explained 'tel 1tclV'ta as the quintessence of the individual, he has claimed more than I have said. I have precisely not decided whether 'tel 1tclV'ta means an entire constellation of what is individual, or whether this phrase does not rather refer to the elements and the counterreferences. At first, I understand 'tel 1tclV'ta only as the entire region to which nothing is lacking; to which region, nevertheless, something is opposed. That to which 1tclV'ta stands in opposition, however, is not alongside them; rather, it is something in which 1tclvta are. Thus seen, KEQ<1UV6~ is no longer a phenomenon of light among others in the entirety of 'tel 1tclV'ta. We do not deny that in the entirety of what there is, lightning too is included in a pre-eminent manner which points in the direction of a summum pns [supreme entity). Perhaps KEQauv6~ as thought by Heraclitus is, however, no ms [entity] which belongs with 'tel 1tclV'ta, also no distinct fflJ, but something which stands in a relationship, still unclear to us, to 'tel 1tcXvta. We have first formulated this relationship in a simile. As lightning tears open light, and gives visibility to things in its gleam, so lightning in a deeper sense lets 1tclV'ta come forth to appearance in its clearing. 1tclV'ta, coming forth to appearance, are gathered in the brightness of lightning. Because the lightning is not a light phenomenon interior to the entirety of 1tclV'ta, but brings 1tclV'ta forth to appearance, the lightning is in a certain sense set apart from 1tclV'ta. Lightning is, therefore, the KeQauvo~ 1tclV'tWV XEXWQLO~vo~. But as thus set apart, lightning is in a certain manner also the joining and again the dismantling in reference to 1tclV'ta. 'tel 1tclV'ta means not only the entirety of individual things. Precisely when one thinks from out of1tUQO~ 'tQ01ta( [transformations of fire], it is rather the transformations of fire throughout the great number of elements which makes up the entirety of individual things. Individual things are then l.llX'tcl, that is, mixed, out of the elements. H t:IDt:GGt:R: In what would you see the distinction between entirety and wholeness? FINK: We speak of wholeness in the whole structure of things which we can address as oA.a, and of the entirety of things, of the oA.ov, in which everything distinguished is gathered and set apart in a specific ordering. HEIDt:GGt:R: Do you understand entirety as oA.ov or xa86A.ov [universal]? FINK. But oA.ov, the entirety of 1tclV'ta, is derivative from h, which is a wholeness of a completely different kind than the structural wholeness

29

of things, or than the wholeness of a summative kind. fv is also not to be understood like the x60)10; in T£j.1ato; [Timaeu.~]. which Plato specifies as a living being with extremities turned inside. 13 The wholeness of lv means the totality which we must rather think as .Ic:pai:QO; [sphere]. Thus we must discriminate the manifold of things and elements, the quintessential entirety of :ru1vta, and the totality thought in fv, which lets the entirety of navta come forth to appearance, and which surrounds it. HEIDEGGER: What do you mean by entirety? Once one has arrived at entirety in thinking, the opinion may emerge that one is at the end of thinking. Is that the danger which you see? FINK: At this point, I would like to speak of a double ray of thought. We must distinguish the thought of things in the whole and the thought that thinks the universe, the totality, or fv. I would like thereby to avoid tel navta, which are referred back to fv as lightining, becoming understood as a universe closed in itself. HEIDEGGER: If we speak of wholeness in reference to tel nc1vta, the danger then consists in fv becoming superfluous. Therefore, we must speak of entirety and not of wholeness with regard to tel navta. The word "entirety" means that nc1vta are in entirety not as in a box, but in the manner of their thorough individuality. We choose the word "entirety" on two grounds: first, in order not to run the danger that the last word be spoken with "the whole"; and second, in order not to understand tel nc1vta only in the sense of fxaata. FINK: In a certain manner tel navta are the many, but precisely not the many of an enumerated set; rather, of a quintessential entirety. HEIDEGGER: The word "quintessence" is on the one hand too static, and on the other it is un-Greek in so far as it has to do with grasping. In Greek, we could speak of nEQiixov [embrace). But fxELv [to hold] does not mean grasping and grip. What comes into play here, we will see from the following fragments. In order to return now to the fragments which we went through in the last seminar: we have seen that they speak of tel nc1vta in different ways. For example, Fr. 7 is the only one in which Heraclitus speaks of navta as <">vta, and in which <'lvta is used at all. Precisely translated, it runs: If everything which is were smoke, noses would discriminate. Here bLayLyvroaxELv is mentioned. We also speak of a diagnosis. Is a diagnosis also a distinguishing? PARTICIPANT: A diagnosis distinguishes what is healthy and what is sick, what is conspicuous and what is not conspicuous in relation to si<:kness. PARTICIPANT: To speak in the terminology of the physician: the physician seeks specific symptoms of sickness. The diagnosis is a passing through the body and a precise, distinguishing cognition of symptoms. Ht:IDEGGER: The diagnosis rests on the original meaning of b£a and

30 means, first of all, a running through and a going through the entire body in order to come then to a distinguishing and a decision. From this we already observe that the btayLyvWoxELV is not only a distinguishing. We must, therefore, say: If everything that is were smoke, noses would have the possibility to go through them. PARTICIPANT: The distinguishing of entities would then happen by means of the sense of smell. HEIDEGGER: But can the senses distinguish at all? This question will still occupy us later with Heraclitus. But how does Heraclitus come to smoke? The answer is not difficult to find. Where there is smoke, there is also fire. FINK: If Heraclitus speaks of smoke in Fr. 7, then it means that the smoke makes O'tpL~ [sight] more difficult in reference to xavta 'tel Ovta, that, nevertheless, in passing through the concealing smoke a bLaytyvWOXELV is possible by way of QLVE~ [the nostrils]. We must also observe that Heraclitus does not say something like: If everything that is becomes smoke. Rather, he says: If everything which is would become smoke. HEIDEGGER: We must understand the y£vEo8aL [coming into existence] in ytvmm [would become] as "coming-forth." If everything that is would come forth as smoke ... In the fragment, the xavta 'tel 6vta are straight away allied with a c'hayvoxnc;. In the background, however, they are spoken of in respect to a character that is connected with fire. FINK: You bring smoke into connection with fire. Smoke stands in relation to the nose. That would mean that the nose also stands over the smoke in a relation to fire. However, is it not precisely the c')"JLc; which is the most fire-like in meaning? I would suppose that the sun like nature of sight can receive the firey more than the nose. Additionally, smoke is something derivative from fire. Smoke is, so to speak, the shadow of fire. One must say: If everything which is would become smoke, as that which is derivative from fire, then noses could cognize what is by means of resistance. However, I would suppose that c')'\VL~. rather than the nose, is allied with fire. HEIDEGGER: Nevertheless, I believe that something else is meant by the nose and smoke. Let us look at Fr. 67. There it says, among other things: allmoU'taL b£ XW01tEQ (1tUQ). om'>'taV OUj.q!LyTJ 8uW!!UOLV, c.'>vo!!O.tnm xa8' T)bovi]v txamou. "But he changes just like fire which, when it is mixed with im:ense, is named according to the fragrance of ead1 one." In our context of meaning, the word we are concerned with is 8ttWJ.La, int·ense. Depending on the incense, which is mixed with fire, a fragrance is spread hy which the fragrance is then named. It is important here that tlw smoke of fil-e can he variously fragrant. That means that the smoke itself has an inherent manifold of distinctions, so that it can be cognized with the nose as a spedlic this or that.

31

FINK: I understand smoke as a phenomenon that veils the distinctions of :rtclv'ta, without the distinctions disappearing entirely. For it is the nose that, in passing through the veil of :rtavta, cognizes distinctions. HEIDEGGER: Thus you take OLa as "throughout the smoke." To the contrary, I understand OLa as "along the smoke." OLayLyvoxnv here means that the possible manifold, immanent to the smoke, can be gone through and cognized. FINK: Whereas, on my preliminary interpretation, smoke veils a multiplicity, on your explication smoke is itself a dimension of multiplicity. The question about 'tel <\vta depends on the way we understand smoke. OLayLyvoxnv in the sense of distinction and decision presupposes the OLa in the sense of "throughout" (minced). PARTICIPANT: If all things would become smoke, then isn't everything one, without distinction? HEIDEGGER: Then noses would have nothing more to do, and there would be no OLa. Fr. 7 denies precisely that everything that is would become homogeneous smoke. If that were the statement of the fragment, then no 0Layvoi:£v could follow. We have brought Fr. 67 into play precisely because it contains an allusion to the fact that smoke is filled with a manifold. FINK: Our attempt at interpreting the fragments of Heraclitus began with Fr. 64. Although we have already discussed a number of ather fragments, this was above all because we wanted to learn in what respects 'tel :rtavta are mentioned. From Fr. 64, with which we began our sequence of fragments, we now turn to Fr. II. It runs: :rtav yciQ ~Q:rt£tOv :rtATJY'J VEJ.I.E'taL, Qeils translates: "Everything that c;rawls is tended by (god's) (whip)blow." What can be the reason for arranging this fragment, which declares that all crawling things are driven to pasture with a blow, behind the K£Qauv6<;-fragment? Approaching from another viewpoint, is it also declared here how lightning steers and how it guides :rtavta; or is something entirely different aimed at in this fragment? Let us proceed in the explication of this fragment from the word :rtATJY'J [blow]. Dicls translates: with god's whipblow. True, god is mentioned in the context, htll not in the fragment itself. We attempt an explication of the saying without thereby putting it in the context. 1-h:mua;t:R: You wish not to include the god. But with Aeschylus and Sophocles we find JtATJyTJ in connection with the god (Agamemnon :Wi7. Ajax 137). FINK: In JtATJyTJ, I sec another fundamental word for lightning. It means, then, the lightning bolt. On this ground, it is justified to turn from 1he K£Qauvo<;-fragmcnt to Fr. II. But lt•t us first stay with the literal language of Heraclitus' saying: everything that crawls is tended and driven to pasture by the blow. The whip blow drives the herd forward and tends it while it is on the pasture. Apparently, in the literal

32 language, a grazing herd is spoken of, which is driven forward and tended by means of the blow of the whip. But if we now refer the blow to the lightning bolt, then the blow is also thunder, which resounds through the wide spaces, the voice of lightning, which drives forward and guides all crawling things. VEJA.£LV means on one hand to drive to pasture, tend and feed; on the other, however, to dispense and allot. We can then say: everything which crawls is alloted by the blow as the voice of lightning. HEIDEGGER: VEJ.lE'taL also refers to NEJA.£OL~ [goddess of retribution]. FINK: NEJA.£OL~. however, does not have only the meaning of alloting and dispensing. PARTICIPANT: VEJ.LE"taL refers equally to V6J.l0~ [custom, law]. FINK: V6J.l0~ regulates for all the citizens of the city the dispensing of what is appropriate to them. The obvious image, which is, however, no allegory, means that everything which crawls is put to pasture with a blow being allotted to it. In VEJ.LE-raL the coerciveness of what befalls one (being driven forward by a blow) connects with the tranquility of grazing. We must hear many things together in VEJ.LE-raL: guiding, pursuing, and steering of the blow and being driven. To the Iauer there also belongs a tending and being steered. Allotment also belongs to the tranquil sense of grazing. Grazing as allotment is protection as well as getting steered in the sense of being forced. HEIDEGGER: I would like to read a few verses from Holderlin's poem, "Peace." Unyielding and unvanquished, you strike alike The lion-he~rted, Nemesis, and the weak, And from the blow your victims tremble Down to the ultimate generation. You hold the secret power to goad and curb For thorn and reins are given into your hands, (Stuttgart edition, vol. 2, I, p. 6, lines 13-18) 14 FINK: A strophe from Holderlin's poem, "Voice of the People" (first edition), also belongs here: And, as the eagle pushes his young and throws Them from the nest, to look in the fields for prey, So, too, the sons of man are driven Out and away by the God's own kindness (Stuttgart edition, vol. 2, I, p. 50, lines 33-36) 14 The kindness of the gods unites in itself the grace and the coen:ion which we must listen for in VEJ.lE'taL in Fr. II. Therewith we have a preliminary orientation concerning that which :ltATJyU and VEJ.lE'taL mean. But does the blow, whi<·h guides and allots, refer generally to -ra :nav-ra? In the saying itself, 1:a :nav-ra are not mentioned. Instead of this, it mentions :nciv tQ:nn6v. It would seem as though a specific field were

33

carved out of tel navta. miv tQltEt6v means everything which crawls. Here it is not a question of the grammatical singular, but of a singular that means a plurality: everything that crawls. Is the sphere of land creatures that crawl outlined in opposition to creatures which live in the air and in the water? Is the manner of movement of land creatures characterized as crawling in contrast to the quicker flight of birds or the quicker swimming of water creatures? I would like to answer the question in the negative. My hunch is that with miv tQltEt6v we are not concerned with a bordered region, but rather with the entire region of tel navta; that is, from a specific aspect that specifies nc1vta in entirety as crawling. nciv tQltEt6v must then be read tel nc1vta w~ tQltEta [everything as crawling]. In that case, Fr. II speaks of navta in so far as they are crawling. To what extent? What crawls is a conspicuously slow movement, the slowness of which is measured by a quicker movement. Which quicker movement is meant here? If we bring miv tQlt£t6v, or navta We; tQltEtcl into connection with ltAflvfl, it is the unsurpassably quick movement of the lightning bolt by which the movement of navta as crawling must be measured. HEIDEGGER: If we no longer understand the lightning bolt only phenomenally but in a deeper sense, then we can no longer say of its movement that it is quick or quicker than the movement of nc1vta. For "quick" is a speed characteristic that only pertains to the movement of navta. FINK: The talk about "quick" in relation to the lightning bolt is inappropriate. Measured by the quickness of lightning, everythit,g that comes to appearance in the brightness of lightning, and has its passage and change, is crawling. Seen in this way,nciv tQltEt6v is also a statement about tel navta. Now, howevever, tel navta are looked back at from lightning. The crawling of navta is a trait that we could not immediately attribute to them as a qualitative detennination. The manifold movements thatnavta in entirety went through are a lame movement as compared to the movement of the lightning blow that tears open lighted space. HEIDEGGER: In order to bring to mind again the course of the int~rpretation of Fr. II, just now put forward, we ask ourselves how the fragment is, therefore, to be read. PARTICIPANT: The explication, the purpose of which was to relate llUV tQnn6v to tel navta, began not with nciv tQltEtOV, but with nA.flrtJ and VEJ.lEtaL. Ht:JOEGGER: That means that the saying is to be read backwards. How it is possible that we can read miv tQltEt6v as ltclvta w~ tQltEtcl, developed out of nA.flyij and VEJ.LEtaL. From miv tQltEt6v alone, we cannot learn the extent to which navta are also mentioned with miv tQltEtOV. But by means of nA.flyij and VEJ.lEtaL, which refers back to the lightning-

34

fragment, it becomes understandable why n:civ EQ1t£'t6v must be understood as 'ta n:c1vta. PARTICIPANT: I would like to ask a foolish question. Can one really understand n:civ EQX£'t6v as 'tQ 1tclV'ta? For only the living being is spoken of in n:civ EQ1tE't6v, but 'tQ 1tclV'ta also encompasses the inanimate. HEIDEGGER: The explication of Fr. II began with the word 1tAT)yij that was referred to the lightning bolt that steers 'ta 1tclV'ta, as is said in Fr. 64. The explication was directed to lv. In starting from lv in the specific form of the lightning bolt, it was made clear that and how n:civ EQ1t£'t6v is to be comprehended as 'ta 1tclV'ta. Your question about the inanimate which would also belong to 1tclV'ta is in fact foolish, because a specific domain is therewith marked off in opposition to another domain. The present explication of Fr. II, however, has shown that with n:civ EQ1t£'tOV it is not a matter of a demarcated domain but of something universal. FINK: We must read n:civ EQ1tn6v as 1tclV'ta W<; EQ1t£'tcl. Crawling does not mean here a property of specific things, namely living things on the earth. Rather, crawling is a character of 1tclV'ta in entirety, which does not reveal itself immediately, but only in relation to the suddenness of the lightning which lets 'ta 1tclV'ta appear in its brightness. In comparison to the suddenness of the lightning bolt that tears open light, the movement of 1tclV'ta that are gathered in the brightness of lightning is a crawling movement. Between the suddenness of lightning and the crawling of n:c1vta, there is no relationship as between the extratemporal and the intratemporal. On the other hand, it is also not a matter of the relationship of Al·hilles and the tortoise. I-:verything that moves about in lightning's dimension of brightness is driven by the blow. In this being driven, 1tclV'ta gain the character of crawling in refcrem·e back to lightning. Fr. II does not mention a shepherd who, turning out to pasture, distributes and guides. Fr. 11 says nothing of a guider, but mentions n:ciV'ta in the character of their being struck and being the subject vis-avis the lightning bolt. Fr. 11 does not relate to Fr. 64 as a partial domain to the entirety of n:civta. Much more, it expresses something about the relationship of n:civta to naked power which drives and guides. HEIDEGGER: Explication of Fr. 11 puts before us the question whether 1tAT)yij and VEIJ.E'taL actually allow a reference to the lightning lx>h, so that n:civ EQ1tE't6v is to be understood, not regionally as a single area within the entirety of n:civta, but as the entirety of n:civta itself. FINK: We turn to Fr. 100: &Qa~ a£ n:avta
35 ning to glow faintly and become dim. If, now, "HA.wc; in the sense of the long enduring lightning bolt replaces lightning, then we must not forget that this fire not only illuminates, but also measures the times. "HA.wc; is the clock of the world, the world-clock; not an instrument that indicates times, but that which makes the seasons possible, which brings all. We cannot understand the seasons in the sense of fixed spells of time or as stretches in homogeneous time, but as the times of days and of years. These times of years are not the lingering but the bringing. nc1vta are not so gathered that they are contemporaneous, but they are in the manner that they arrange themselves xa"t' ~QLV and xa"ta "tOv A.6yov. naV"ta rise, act, and are steered by the begetting, fulfilling, and producing seasons. HEIDEGGER: Let us try to clarify the extent to which time is mentioned in Fr. 100. What are seasons? Alongside the three Hesiodic seasons, EuVOJ.lLa, ALXTJ, and ElQilvT] [Good Order, justice, and Prosperous Peace), 15 there is also Oalloo, Ausoo. and K«Qnoo. 9all00 is the springtime, which brings the shoot and blossom. Ausoo means summer, ripening and maturing. KaQ1tOO means autumn, picking of the ripe fruit. These three seasons are not like three time periods; rather, we must understand them as the whole maturation. If we want to speak of movement, which form of Aristotlian movement would come into question? First of all, what are the four forms of movement with Aristotle? PARTICIPANT: ai)sTJOLc; and q>O(mc; [growth and wasting away], YEVEOLc; and q>Oo¢ [genesis and corruption], cpoQcl and as fourth illo(wmc; [productiveness and alteration). 16 HEIDEGGER: Which form of movement would be most appropriate to the seasons? PARTICIPANT: ai)sTJOLc; and q>9£mc; as well as YEvEmc; and q>90Qcl. HEJDEGGER: Qll.o(wmc; is contained in these forms of movement. Spring, summer and autumn are not intermittent, but something continual. Their maturation has the character of continuity, in which an illo(wmc; is contained. FINK: The movement of life in nature is, however, growth as well as withering. The first part is an increasing to axJ.liJ [acme], the second part a withering. HunF.GGER: Do you understand fruit as being already a stage of dcdine? FINK: The life of a living being forms a rising and falling bow. I Iuman life is also a steady hut an:hing movement, in its successively li>llowing aging. Ht:mt:GGt:R: Age corresponds to fruit in the sense of ripening, \\'hich I ur~derstand not as a declining but as a kind of self fulfillment. If time comes into play with the seasons, then we must let go of calculated time. We must attempt to understand from other phenomena what time

36 means here. Also, we may not separate the content of time from the form of time. The character of bringing belongs to time. In our language we also say: time will tel1. 17 So long as we understand time as bare succession, bringing has no place. FINK: In order to win an understanding of the maturation character of the seasons, we must disregard homogenous time, which one represents as a line and as bare succession and in which the time content is abstracted. Such an abstraction is impossible with the seasons. HEIDEGGER: Fr. 100 places us before different questions. To what extent may one take the seasons together with m1vta? How must time be thought, if one wishes to speak of it here, especially if one says of it that it brings. We must simply get clear to ourselves in what sense time brings. FINK: In this, it is necessary not to think time as a colorless medium in which things swim about. Rather, we must seek to understand time in reference to the y£yvEa9aL of nc1vta. HEIDEGGER: We must think time together with qromc;. FINK: Presently, we stand before the question whether Fr. 100 is able to give us still further references to the matter that we attempt to think, or whether it is not more appropriate to revert first to Fr. 94. HEIDEGGER: The 2500 years that separate us from Heraclitus are a perilous affair. With our explication of Heraclitus' fragments, it requires the most intense self-criticism in order to see something here. On the other hand, it also requires a venture. One must risk something, because otherwise one has nothing in hand. So there is no objection to a speculative interpretation. We must therefore presuppose that we can only have a presentiment of Heraclitus, when we ourselves think. Yet, it is a question whether we still can measure up to this task.

4 "HALO~,

Daylight-Night, JA.FrQU-'tEQJA.U'ta (Correlated Fragments: 94, 120, 99, 3, 6, 57, 106, 123).

In the last seminar session we have let some questions stand unmastered. Today we are still not in a position to somehow bring the openness of the explication situation to a decision. After discussion of the "HALO~-fragment [sun fragment] we attempt to come back to Frs. II and 100 in which n:civ tQ3tE"tOv and WQQL [seasons] are mentioned. We have seen that WQQL, the hours and the times, are not to be taken as a stream of time or as a temporal relation that, subjected to metric leveling down, is measurable and calculable. Hours and times are also not to be taken as the empty form in contrast to the content of time, but as filled time which begets and produces each thing in its' own time. WQQL are no hollow forms, but rather the times of the day and of the season. The times of day and seasons apparently stand in connection with a fire that does not, like lightning, suddenly tear open and place everything in the stamp of the outline, but that holds out like the heavenly fire and, in the duration, travels through the hours of the day and the times of the season. The heavenly fire brings forth growth. It nourishes growth and maintains it. The light-fire of "HA.w~ tears open-different from lightning-continually; it opens the brightness of day in which it allows growth and allows time to each thing. This sun-fire, the heavenilluminating power of "HALO~, does not tarry fixed at one single place, but travels along the vault of heaven; and in this passage on the vault of heaven the sun-fire is light- and life-apportioning and time measuring. The metric of the sun's course mentioned here lies before every calculative metric made by humans. If we now turn to Fr. 94 in which the talk is explicitly about this heaven-fire, then we remain on the trail of fire, which we have already trod with the KEQauv6~-fragment. Fragment 94 runs as follows: "HALO~ yO.Q oux imEQPTJOE'taL ~QQ' d ()£ J!TJ, 'EQLvUE~ J!LV &£xE~ 'rn£xoUQOL i;nJQTJOOUOLV. Diels translates: "(For) Helios will not overstep his measures; otherwise the Erinyes, ministers of Dike, will find him out." If we let this fragment work upon us without particularly thorough preparation, what is expressed in it, supposing that we be permitted to take the sayings of Heraclitus as a model of a thematic statement? First of all, the word J,li"tQa [measure] is problematic. Which measure does the sun have or set up? Does the sun itself have measures in which it travels along the vault of heaven? And if the sun sets up measures, which measures are these? Can we determine more closely this distinction beFINK:

38 tween the measures that belong to the sun itself and those that it sets up? First, we can understand jd'tQa in reference to the passage and course of the sun. rfA.wc;, as the fire that travels the heaven, has specific measures in its course like the measures of morning light, of midday heat and of subdued twilight. If we look only toward the phenomenon of the sun's course, we see that UHA.wc; exhibits no even, homogeneous radiation, but rather timely differences in the way of being luminous. At the same time, however, by the measures through which the sun passes in its passage, the nourishing fire is apportioned in various ways to the growth of the earth that is found in the sun's brightness. The second meaning of j.Li'tQQ lies therein: the measures of light and warmth which the sun apportions to growth. We can on one hand distinguish the measures which are exhibited by the course of the sun itself, and on the other hand those measures which the sun sets up to what it shines on in the way that the sun apportions the fiery to it. IJ.FtQQ can thus be understood in a two-fold manner: the jd'tQa of the sun's course and the IJ.FtQQ that works down from the sun's course to what nourishes itself from the sun's light. However, does the sun also have jd'tQQ in yet a completely different sense? Is ~A.toc;, which is bound to the measures of its course and which apportions from there the nourishing tire to everything found in the sunlight, is this mwc; squeezed into measures in a completely other sense? Is there perhaps also !li'tQQ in such a manner that the entire double domain of light is determined by measures? When Heraclitus says, "For ~A.wc; will not overstep his measures," a natural law of ~A.wc; is in no way formulated here. It is not a matter of the insight that the sun's course is subject to any inviolable natural law, for then the second sentence would have no meaning. In this sentence it says that in case ~A.wc; should overstep his measures the Erinyes, helpers of Dike, would track him down and bring him to account. But what is a restriction, a holding to measure of"HA.wc;? ~A.wc; will not overstep his measures. Can we imagine at all that he would be able to overstep his measures? We have brought to mind two ways in which he would not take the correct way across the vault of heaven. One could imagine that he suddenly stops, perhaps at the commend of Joshua for the time in which Joshua waged battle against the Amorites. That would be an overstepping of the IJ.E'tQQ of his own nature. In such a case he would no longer be in accord with his own nature of fiery power. The sun could <·hange her own essem·e if she traveled along the vault of heaven in a manner other than in accord with nature. The sun nmld overstep her measures if she ran from north to south instead of from east to west. However, a completely different manner of overstepping the boundary would l:x= supposed if "HA.wc; were to break illlo a domain of whid1 we nmld not speak further at the moment, for this domain lies beyond the brightness of "HA.U>c; in whi<·h the many are gathered. Then "HA.wc; goes out of the sun"s domain in whi<·h everything

39 is one in another sense. That would also be a going astray of the sun; now, however, not in the manner of deviation from the sun's path, but in the manner of a breaking into the nightly abyss to which "HA.toc; does not belong. In order to bring this thought somewhat nearer, let us include fragment 120 in which tEQJ.lata [boundaries] and not JAi'tQUndary. then we have, as it were, the four corners of the world as the field of the sun's realm. Thus seen, t~-Q~tata would not he equated with the two meanings of J.lEtQa just mentioned. That which Fr. 120 says in rderen<·e to TEQJ.lata would be a third meaning of J.lEtQU that we must include with both of the others in order to take in view the full meaning of J.lEtQa in Fr. 94. In this case-as a
40

deviation from the measures that arc sent would, for growing and living things, mean that the sun is too hot, too close or too far away. The third meaning of J,Li'tQa, which we have picked up out of Fr. 120, signifies 'tEQJ.I.a'ta in which the sun's entire domain of light is enclosed. Were "HALO~ to overstep the boundary that is fixed by the four corners of the world, the Erinyes, helpers of Dike, would find "HALO~ out. Such an overstepping would not only mean a deviation from the familiar path; rather, such an overstepping would mean a breaking into a nightly abyss to which the sun's domain does not belong. HEIDEGGER: When you grasp 'IJoii~ xai £mt£Qa~ as gnzitivu.5 .mbiectivu.5 [subjective genitive] then you come into proximity of the third meaning of J,Li'tQa. FINK: I do not want at first to maintain this as a thesis. Rather, I am only concerned to show three possible meanings of J,Li'tQa, whereby the third signifies that which Fr. 120 says about dQJ.I.a'ta. HEIDEGGER: In ordinary language use, we distinguish, in reference to J,Li'tQQ, between the measure and the measured. FINK: We can understand measure in a topical and in a chronosrelated sense. The first significance of J,Li'tQQ means the measures that the sun will not overstep, the measures in the sense of the places and times of its path across the vault of heaven. Measures mean here, however, not natural laws, but they concern rather the
41

FINK: But then l'EQJ.l«'ta would no longer have the sense of boundaries that form morning and evening. In such a view, morning and evening become almost a determination of a region that seems to me questionable. PARTICIPANT: The translation is oriented around the idea of Orient and Occident, which get separated by the communication line of the North Star with the daily culmination point of the sun's passage. I myself would not follow this interpretation either, since there was not yet the idea of Orient and Occident in Heraclitus' time. Rather, this idea can be assigned only from Herodotus on. FINK: The Kranz interpretation does away with the boundary character of morning and evening. If one speaks of the one line between the North Star and the daily culmination point of the sun's passage, then also the plural, l'EQJ.la'ta, is no longer quite understandable. Although the explication given by Kranz is a possible answer to the difficulty that Fr. 120 presents, still it seems to me as if the lt>ctio diff~eilior [more difficult rendition] is thereby precluded. We have brought to mind the ambiguity of JA.ttQ
42 we walk. Light, as the element of the fiery, together with the element of the air, lies on the earth and in a certain manner also on the ocean. The ocean also forms a boundary for the realm of light, although the ocean lets in the light up to a certain depth. Its transparency is confined. The opaqueness of the earth, which leads to the boundedness of the open domain of light, is a peculiar phenomenon that is not evident to us for the most part. We find ourselves on the opaque earth, at which the domain of light has its boundary. Over us, however, light's domain of power extends in open endlessness. The opaqueness of the earth has a meaning for the passage of the sun. In accord with the immediate phenomenon, "H).to~ rises out of the bowels of the earth at morning; in daytime he moves along the vault of heaven and he sinks again into the closed ground of earth at evening. That is said as a description of the immediate phenomena without esoteric symbolism. Now we turn to Fr. 99, which evidences the general structure: d llTJ fj).to~ /J~. lv£xa 'tWv t'illwv ciatQWV £UcpQ6vTJ civ /Jv. Diets translates: "Were there no sun, it would be night in spite of the other stars." ~).w~ is the star that alone brings full brightness. Now, however, he is not only indicated in his power, in his superiority over the other stars, but the structure, which we do not see in ~).w~ himself, becomes clear in the other stars. The other stars are lights in the night. We have here the noteworthy feature that luminescence exhausts itself in its radiated light space and is walled in by the dark of night. The other stars are gleaming points in the night heaven. The moon can also illuminate the night in a stronger manner than the stars, but the moon cannot extinguish them as alone "H).to~ can. We must put the following question concerning the other stars in the night. If "H).w~ presents himself as a realm of light alx>Ve the opaque ground, and if he seems to go on in open endlessness, can we not also understand the structure of "H).w~ and 'tel naV'ta in terms of the other stars as lights in the darkness of night? That is, can we understand the whole world of the sun as a light in the night which, it is true, is not certified by the phenomena? We would then have to say that as the stars are a light in the night, and as the sun's domain of light has its lxmndary at the closedness of earth, so the entire world of "H).to~. to which the entirety of nav'ta belong, is encircled in a deeper sense by a nightly abyss which confines the domain of power of "H).w~. The helpmates of Dike watch from the boundary between the light domain of "H).to~ and the dark abyss. The sun herself we do not see like one of the stars in the night, but only in her own brightness. Fr. 3 speaks thereof: flJQO~ 1t000~ av8QW1tElOlJ. As phenomenon, the sun has the width of a human foot. Hum:r;c;t:K: When you speak of ··phenomenon," you mean that whic:h shows itself in its immediacy, and not the "phenomenological." FINK: Fr. 3 also speaks in the manner of allegory. To begin with it

43 says that only a tiny, insignificant place belongs to the sun as a source of light with its own brightness, so that the opening power of "HA.t.o~ in the opened light space itself appears to be only a negligible affair. What opens veils itself in a certain manner in what is opened by it, and takes a position below the things encircled by it as the light power. To the extent that the sun appears in the firmament in the width of a human foot, ascends, sinks and disappears, she is new on each day, as Fr. 6 says: vto~ t«jJ it!'£~ tat(v. Heraclitus gives no scientific stipulation that each day the sun arises new. The newness of the sun on each day does not contradict the fact that she is the same sun each day. She is the same, but always new. We must hold on to this thought for the question concerning the sun as a form of :rtUQ adl;(OO'V, which perpetually is, but-as Fr. 30 says-is kindled and quenched according to measures, wherein the constant newness itself comes to expression. When we come to Fr. 30 the concept of ~QLl>aaxaA.oc; {)£ :rtAELatwv 'Ho(ol>o~· 'toil'tov £:rt£ataV'tal :rtA.Ei:ata dof:vaL, oatlc; itJA.tQTiv xai EucpQ6vr)v oux £YLV(l)(JXEV · Eatl yO.Q fv. Diets' translation runs, '"Hesiod is teacher of the many. They are pursuaded by him that he knows most; he, who does not know day and night. Yet, one is!" In what does the supposed wisdom of Hesiod consist? To what extent has he, who has written about days and works, not known day and night? Day and night are alternating conditions of the sun's land in which it is bright and dark in rythmic alteration. The darkness of night in the domain of the sun is something other than the closedness of the soil into which no light is able to penetrate. The dark night is illuminated by the glimmering stars. In contrast to the closedness of the earth, the dark of night has by itself fundamental illuminability. Together with the sun fragments we must think the fragments which treat of day and night. Fr. 57 belongs to these. The most difficult phrase in it is EatL yO.Q fv [Yet, one is]. If day and night are to be one, then wouldn't the plural Eio£ [are] have to stand in place of the sin~ular Eatl [is]? Is the indistinguishability of day and night meant here, or else something completely different which does not show itself at first ~lann_.. Our question is: docs Fr. 57. spoken out of £v. contain a statement l orKerning day and night? Are day and night in fv, or arc they fv? Hcsiod has evidently understood most of day and night, and yet he is reproved by Heraclitus because he held day and night to he of different kinds. In Hesiod's Tlu•ogcmy the contrast of day and night means somc1hin~ other than merely the contrast of two conditions of transparent 'J>ace in which light Gill he present or absent. Perhaps it is too darin~ if we think in this connection about the strife ol the Olympian gods with the Titans. Here a deft runs through the l'lltirety that draws together l(u· HCJ"aclitus, if not in the evident, then in I he unSl'l"ll harmony. One l·an read the £mL yiJ.Q fv in this Sl'nsc. Day and

44 night do not comprise any distinction you please, but rather the original form of all distinctions. The contrast of day and night also plays a role with Parmenides (JWQCPci~ yaQ xa-tE6t:vto Mo yvro11a~ ovollal;ELv) [For they made up their minds to name two forms], 18 however, in reference to mortals. If one understands lon yaQ h in the sense that day and night are one in f:v, then wouldn't the plural do£ have to stand in place oflon? Seen grammatically, is a plural possible here at all? For me the question is whether, instead of reading, "day and night are one f:v or are in f:v," one must read, "there is ~v." In this case, vanishing of distinctions would have another sense. Hesiod knew his way around, but he did not know of f:v, that it is. "For there is f:v." Thus read, f:v is not to be comprehended as predicative, but as the subject of the sentence. HEIDEGGER: Then lon yaQ f:v is to be taken absolutely. To think of it differently or to believe that Hesiod did not recognize day and night would be an unreasonable suggestion. FINK: When Heraclitus says that Hesiod has not recognized day and night, that is an intentionally provocative statement. HEIDEGGER: One does not need to be Hesiod in order to distinguish day and night. When he treated of day and night he did so in a deeper sense than in the manner of a mere distinction that each of us performs. Thus, Heraclitus cannot have wanted to say that Hesiod has distinguished day and night, but that he has erred since day and night are one. We cannot accept Diels' translation, "Yet, one is!" FINK: "Yet, one is!" sounds like "They are one of a kind." I am unable to connect any sense with this translation. Day and night are familiar to us as the changing conditions, as the basic rhythm of life, as presence and absence of the sun in her light in the domain of the open. The domain of the open can be daylight or dark night. This distinction is familiar to us in its rhythmic return. In the way that the return is adhered to, '1-IA.w~ shows adherence to measures that he has and that are protected from outside by Dike. When Heraclitus says that Hesiod misunderstood day and night, he does not thereby wish to maintain that Hesiod has overlooked the fact that day and night form no distinction at all. Rather, Heraclitus wishes to maintain that day and night are one in thinking back to f:v, and that within f:v they are set apart as opposite relations, as we can also find in Fr. 67, where it says that god is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger. Heraclitus is much more concerned here with f:v in quite another manner. PARTICIPANT: Musn't we also take Fr. 106, in which 11£a
lan yaQ f:v.

45 FINK: The IJ{a qroou; of day, however, is held against a positing of good and bad, that is, propitious and unpropitious days. The oneness of the nature of day stands against such distinction of the days. This, however, is not to be equated with the fLAEL (Nature loves to hide], how then is cpl)OLc; to be understood? PARTICIPANT: In the sense of emerging. HEIDEGGER: The connection of cpUOLc; and b will concern us in greater detail later. fiNK: For me, the puzzling word in Fr. 57 is f
46 the sun temporarily is absent and new on each new day. Thus seen, fv would be the vault of heaven. However, this explication is not acceptable to me. I do not understand, "there ish," in this sense. HEIDEGGER: Why do you reject this interpretation? FINK: Because for me the union of day and night under the vault of heaven is too easy a reading. When Heraclitus says "there is fv" in reference to day and night, the land of sun is meant with the day, and the dark abyss that incloses and encircles the land of sun is meant with night. The sun's domain and the nightly abyss together form fv. HEIDEGGER: Is the h that you now have in view something like an over-being that surpasses even being: I suppose that you want to get out of being with your interpretation of h, which departs from the hitherto existing illuminating h of lightning. PARTICIPANT: I do not believe that fv as the double domain of the land of sun and the nightly abyss surpasses being. If the preceding interpretation has, in starting out from the KEQC1UV6~-fragment, focused first on the structural moment of the light character in being, the uncovering, then the current interpretation, when the nightly abyss is mentioned, focuses on the structural moment of closedness in being, on the concealment that belongs essentially to uncovering. Therefore, the explication does not surpass being; rather, it goes deeper into being than the preceding awareness, since it takes in view the full dimensionality of being. FINK: Our explication of Heraclitus began by our illuminating the reference of lightning and 'tel :n:clv'ta. Lightning tears open the brightness, lets 'tel :n:avta come forth to appearance and arranges each thing in its fixed outline. Another name for fv is the sun. The sunlight, which runs out over us in open endlessness, finds a boundary at the closedness of the soil. In his own field of light, UHA.to~ has only the width of a human foot. He moves along in fixed measures on the vault of heaven. By his own measures, growth and living creatures, which are shined upon by '1-IA.to~. have their specific measures. Within the realm of the sun there is a general distinction between day and night that is posited with the presence and absence of the sun. The domain that is encircled by the f(mr 'tEQil«ta remains even when the sun seems to sink away. The structure of h then shifts over from the temporary presence of the sun to OUQav6~ [heaven]. One can then say that the distinction of day and night is not so important to grasp because under OUQav6~ day and night alternate and the relation of a vault of heaven to the many thereunder remains. Hesiod had distinguished day and night and thereby not considered that day and night is only one distinction within OUQav6~. This interpretation still does not appeal to me. Precisely when we consult the fragments on death and life, the other dimension of closed ness will show itself to us beside the already familiar dimensions of the light character

47 and openness. The fv which Heraclitus attempts to think in Fr. 57 is the unity of the double domain. HEIDEGGER: But how do both domains hang together? FINK: The light space of lightning or of "HA.w~. in which xc1vta come forth to appearance and move into their outline, is encircled by a dark abyss. "HA.w~ is not permitted to overstep the boundary set to his domain of power and go into the nightly foundation, because he will be brought to account by the Erinyes, who guard the boundary of the double domain. HEIDEGGER: Is it here a question of two domains or of one and the same which is distinguished in itself? Let us put this question aside for the moment. We will come back to it later. I would like once again to go into Ecrn yag fv. Can one place the plural do£ here at all? Diels sets a semicolon before fan yCJ.Q fv. Seen purely stylistically, a period and not a semicolon would suitably have to be placed in Heraclitus' language. Perhaps Diels was misled into using the semicolon by the subsequent yCJ.Q [yet]. A period is therefore called for, because in fan yCJ.Q fv something uncommon follows which must be sharply contrasted with what has preceded. FINK: Most people are familiar with the distinction of night and day. Hesiod, who treated of day and night, also belongs to them. But he did not understand day and night because he did not know ~uvov. The £an yag fv works like a blow. It is intentionally thematic and is said like a dictate. HEIDEGGER: Because Hesiod did not know ~uv6v, Heraclitus cannot associate with him. They both speak a different language. FINK: In fan yag fv Heraclitus does not think the vanishing of distinctions, but the lv of the double domain. There is lv. Here fv is the subject of the sentence. One must come into the dimension of lv as the double domain in order to go beyond the xoA.A.o£. Heraclitus would not say that Hesiod is a blockhead. When he reproves Hesiod it is only l>ecausc Hesiod is a speculative blockhead. fan yag lv is foundation for oux ty£vwaxEV [does not know]. HuoEGGER: Heraclitus does not name the ground but only says that Hesiod does not know it. FINK: The ignoranl·e of Hesiod is unmasked by the £an yag fv. PARTICIPANT: It remains a difficulty for me to what extent £an yag i::v should l>e illuminating about the ignorance of Hesiod, which shows itself in thinking about day and night. It must therefore l>e determined hy us in whidt relation £an yag £v stands to Hesiod's knowledge of day and night. FINK: You refn yag too din.·nly to Hesiod's misunderstanding ahout day and night. Hcsiod has imerpreted the phenomenon of day and night not just diflerently from Heraclitus. There is not another view

48 of day and night that replaces Hesiod's differentiation of day and night here. Rather, Heraclitus speaks out of the knowledge of lv when he says that the partition of day and night contradicts the fundamental character of being. HEIDEGGER: Hesiod belongs to the people who are named in Fr. 72: xai o[~ xa8' i)!liQav EYKUQOUOL, Taut: a aut:oi:~ !;tva cpa(vat:aL. "And those things with which they jostle every day seem strange to them." He~d jostles daily with the distinction of day and night. FINK: Day and night are for him the most daily and the most nightly ... HEIDEGGER: ... but it remains strange to him in what they actually are, when thought from lv. FINK: If we finally view the Helios and the day/night fragments together, we can say the following. The heaven-fire of the sun behaves similarly toward everything that has continuence by the sun's passage, as the lightning toward xavta. The sun gives light, outline and growth and brings the time for everything that grows. The sun is determined in her passage by llit:Qa, which has to check her, because she is otherwise brought to account by the helpmates of Dike. The sun also determines the !lit:Qa for the increase and growth of things. She will not overstep the !lit:Qa but will remain within her domain of power, which is confined by the four TEQJ.«l"ta. The deeper meaning of Dike still remains obscure for the present. Till now, Dike is clear only as a power superior to the power of "Hi..LO~. Although "HA.w~ and Zeus are the highest powers on earth, "HALO~ has a power on the earth that overpowers brightness. The llit:QQ of "HALO~ have been explained to us in a three-fold sense. First we distinguish the llit:Qa of the sun's course, second the !lit:Qa of things under the sun's course and third the llit:Qa, which encircle the entire domain of the sun's brightness. Reference to Fr. 3 has shown us the structure of the emplacement of"Hi..LO~ in the brightness proper to him. Fr. 6 thinks the daily newness and always-the-sameness of the sun together. The one cpUOL~ of day is the same cpum~ also with respect to the well known distinction of good and bad, propitious and unpropitious days. We must take all these thought motifs together, without rashly identifying them. Still it becomes constantly more difficult for us to hold in view the manifold of relations. This difficulty already shows itself in reference to the differences of the immediate phenomena we have considered and the paths of thought determined by them.

5 The Problem of a Speculative Explication.-1tUQ cidl;wov and Time? (Fragment 30).

HEIDEGGER: When Professor Fink interpreted XUQ ad~wov, which occurs in Fr. 11, I asked what he was actually doing. I wanted to drive at the question of how this attempt to think with Heraclitus should be made. In this connection, there was mention of a speculative leap that suggested itself in a certain way in so far as we start reading the text from the immediacy of the expressed content and, in so doing, arrive through the process of thinking at the expression of something that cannot be verified by way of immediate intuition. If one thinks schematically, one can say that we go from a statement according to perception to an unsensuous statement. But what does "speculative" mean? PARTICIPANT: "Speculative" is a derivative from speculum (mirror) and speculari (to look in or by means of the mirror). The speculative, then, is evidently a relationship of mirroring. HEJDEGGER: Presumably, the mirror plays a role. But what does the word "speculative" mean in ordinary terminological use? Where in philosophy is Latin written and spoken? PARTICIPANT: In the Middle Ages. HEJDEGGER: There existimatio speculativa [speculative judgment] is mentioned in distinction from existimatio practica or also operativa [practical or operative judgment]. Existimatio speculativa is synonymous with existimatio theoretica [theoretical judgment], which is oriented toward the species [type]. Species is the Latin translation of dboc; [form]. What is meant here is, therefore, a seeing, a 8EWQELV that is, a theoretical considering. Kant also speaks of the speculative in the sense of theoretical reason. But how does this affair stand with Hegel? What does Hegel call speculation and dialectic? PARTICIPANT: The speculative and dialectic designate Hegel's method of thinking. PARTICIPANT: With speculation, Hegel attempted to reach beyond the finite into infinity. HEJDEGGER: Hegel does not first start out with the finite in order then to reach infinity; rather, he begins in infinity. He is in infinity from the start. With my question about the speculative, I only wish to make clear that the attempt to rethink Heraclitus is not a matter of the speculative in the proper sense of Hegel or in the sense of the theoretical. First of all, we must renounce talking in any manner about the method ac-

50 cording to which Heraclitus would think. On the one hand, we must see to it-as Professor Fink has done up to this point-that we make clarifications with the intention of helping the participants follow more clearly and precisely the steps that we have made thus far while reading and thinking the text and that we will make later on. We can clarify the problem which stands behind that when Professor Fink gives us an example. FINK: The manner of our reading and procedure is characterized in that we start out from what is made present to us of the matter named in Heraclitus' sayings, as though this matter were _lying immediately before our eyes. In his fragments, Heraclitus does not speak in any veiled manner like the god in Delphi, of whom Heraclitus says: oirtE A.tyet oi:iu XQtm'tEL ilia m]J.La(vn. 111 His manner of speaking cannot be equated with that of the god in Delphi. In reading the fragments, we first pick up the phenomenal findings and attempt their clarification. We do not, however, make the phenomenal findings clear in their full extent; rather, our clarification is already selectively steered. HEIDEGGER: By what is it selectively determined? FINK: The selection is determined in that we always come back from Heraclitus' saying and seek each feature in the immediate phenomena that are mentioned in the fragment. An empirical phenomenology of the sun would yield an abundance of phenomenal features which would not be meaningful at all for the sense of the sun fragments. First we read the fragment with a certain naivete. We attempt to bring into relief a few features in reference to the things which are correlates of our sensuous perceptions in order, in a second step toward the features and references thus extracted, to ask how they can be thought in a deeper sense. From immediate seeing of sensuous phenomena, we go over to an unsensuous, though not transcendent, domain. Here, we may not utilize the scheme, which we find in metaphysics, of phenomenal, i.e., sensible, and intelligible world, and operate with a two-world doctrine of metaphysks. Talk about a sensible and intelligible domain is highly dangerous and doubtful. HEmn;c;t:R: It would be more appropriate if we designate the phenomenal domain as ontic ... FINK: ... and the unsensuous domain as allied with being. What is remarkable, however, is that we can comprehend the fragments of Heraclitus in a naive manner also, and then still connect a deep sense [ f'ium tirfm Sinn) with them, so that we cannot even <·all the genuine philosophi<·al sense a deep st•nst· [ TiPj.iinn ). llt:ll>t:<;<;t:R: Can one speak of a philosophi<·al sense at all? FINK: Certainly we may not s1x·ak of a nmn·ptual nwaning of llt'raclitus" sayings. Since Wl' have 1 he language of metaphysi<·s behind

51

us, we must attempt to avoid being misled by the developed thought paths of metaphysics. In order to indicate the manner of our procedure, let us go once again into Fr. II. Translated, it runs: Everything that crawls is driven to pasture or tended with the blow. An image is mentioned there that we know from the phenomenal environment and that we can easily bring to mind. In a rural region or in an agrarian state, the beast is driven to pasture with the whip blow. We can then read 1tciv EQJtn6v as pasture animals. The image that Heraclitus mentions implies that the pasture animals will be driven to pasture by the shepard with the whip blow, indeed so that they change pasture ground from time to time. HEJDEGGER: Tending is a driving as well as a leading. FINK: For our explication of VEf.LE"taL, driving and leading are the meaningful moments of sense. Now, when we also hear NE!l£OL~ in VE!l£'taL as the power that allots and fatefully determines, then we have left the immediate phenomenon of tending and entered thoughtfully upon the unsensuous domain. We understand VEJ.lE'taL no more as the driving and leading of the shepard in the sense of alloting and dispensing of what is appropriate to actual pasture animals, but as an alloting and dispensing reign. Then the question suggests itself whether that which is said in small scale in the fragment cannot also be said in large scale. The microcosmic and macrocosmic relationship suggests itself as perhaps a most harmless expression. The thoughtful transposition of phenomenal structures into anothe1· dimension, however, brings with it a transformation of the structures from which we first start out. HEIDEGGER: Yet, the thoughtful transposition implies a specific kind of thinking about the appearance of which we are still ignorant. FINK: When I speak of thoughtful transposition into another dimension, that is only a first attempt to circumscribe the manner of our procedure, because we still do not know what it means to go over into another dimension. If we wish to speak of an analogy in this connection, then we must think it in a specific way. In this analoh'Y· only one side is ~iven to us, namely the phenomenal one. As we hold selectively to specific phenomenal structures, we translate them into large scale in an advemurous attempt. In Fr. II, we translate the way and manner in whidt a herd is lead to pasture into the large scale of the entire actuality in whidt a tending and alloting reign of things and elements happens. The enlargement of a special individual phenomenon into the whole would perhaps be a form under whkh we could spt•ak of the way of our attempt to think with Heraditus. lh:mt:ea;u{: I regard this formulation of your pnKedure as dang<·rous. Perhaps wt• <"
52 the large. We must distinguish on one hand our attempt to rethink the fragments of Heraclitus and on the other hand the way that Heraclitus himself has thought. FtNK: What Heraclitus thinks in large scale, he can only say in small scale. HEIDEGGER: Thinking and saying have their special difficulties. Is it a question of two different matters? Is saying only the expression of thinking? FINK: The distinction between inner thinking and the articulation of thinking in language is an idea that we have from the history of philosophy. There is the view that philosophical thinking cannot say completely everything that it thinks; so that, in a certain way, what philosophy thinks remains behind the linguistic expression. The deepest thoughts are then ciQQTI'tOV [unspeakable]. This model does not apply to Heraclitus. His sayings are no hierophantic, withholding speech about the linguistically inscrutable mystery. Heraclitus does not know the opposition of the linguistically open and the impenetrable mystery that gets thought as refugium or asylum ignorantiae [refuge or asylum of ignorance]. It is something else when we think the mystery in a completely different manner. Heraclitus speaks in a language which does not know the stark difference between inner thinking and outward saying. HEIDEGGER: But how about thinking and saying? We will also have to say for Heraclitus that there is a saying to which the unsaid belongs, but not the unsayable. The unsaid, however, is no lack and no barrier for saying. FINK: With Heraclitus we must always have in view the multidimensionality of speaking that we cannot fix at one dimension. Seen from the immediate statement, only the pasture animals in their manner of movement are named in :rtciv tQ:rtE't6v. But now we have attempted to read and interpret :rtciv tQ:rtE'tOV as :rtclV'ta we; tQ:rtE'tcl, and we have referred :rtATJyrl to the lightning bolt. In this consists our jump-off into the nonphenomenal domain. Measured by the tremendously sudden movement, everything that stands under the lightning in its light-shine and is brought into its stamp has the character of an animallike, i.e., slow movement. It is to be asked, however, whether it is a matter oftwo levels, so that we can say: as in the sensory domain the animal herd is put to pasture by the whip blow, so in the whole all things are steered by lightning. I would like to think that we may not set both these levels off so sharply in contrast from each other. If we speak of two levels, then there is the danger that we make comparisons from the phenomenal level and begin to move into unrestricted analogies. If we suppose the two levels to be sharply distinguished, then we miss precisely their interplay. Heraclitus knows no fixed levels; but we must precisely notice, with interpretation of his fragments, that and how they interplay. The force

53 of his sayings consists in the fact that working from the large scale, Heraclitus can also say something in reference to the everyday. HEIDEGGER: Perhaps you have already said too much. FINK: Our starting point, however, in explicating the fragments, consists in the more or less known traits of the phenomena. I want to attempt to clarify still another fragment which has already concerned us. Fr. 99 reads in translation, "If the sun were not, it would be night on account of the other stars." Here is pronounced not only a eulogy of the power, of the strength of'liA.w~ which drives out darkness, but we see in the other stars the possibility of being lights in the darkness. Light shines in the darkness. That means that the circuit of lights is surrounded by the night. The stars and the moon indicate the possibility of the lights being imbedded in the dark of night. Here lies the jump-off for our question. Could it not be that as the stars are imbedded in the night, the open-endless domain of the sun is also imbedded in a nonphenomenal night? HEIDEGGER: When you speak of "endless," that is no Greek idea. FINK: With the expression "open-endless" I mean only the phenomenal feature that we see no wall when looking up, but rather only the character of running out and of not arriving. The phenomenal state of affairs addressed in Fr. 99, that lights can be imbedded in the dark of night, has put before us the question whether or not the sun's domain, and thus "HA.w~ in his reference to "tel :ru1vta, can have J,&hQ
54

must say: Hesiod had held day and night distinguished; however, there is b. So understood, day and night do not coincide; but from knowledge of b even the most conspicuous distinction between day and night cannot in the end be accepted as such. There is the one, and if there is success in coming into knowledge of the one (6JWAoYELV), then that which is torn asunder in opposition is suffused by the single unity of b. So far as Heraclitus thinks from out of h, he cannot allow the demarcation made between day and night by the most knowledgeable teacher. HEIDEGGER: You thus distinguish a manifold essence of night. On one hand, you distinguish the night from the daily day, and then you understand night also as the closedness of earth, ... FINK: ... whereby the closedness of earth is the boundary of the sun's domain. The realm of the sun in her reference to 'ta m1vta is the domain of openness in which day and night are in exchange, ... HEIDEGGER: ... and day and night in their exchange are still in another night? FINK: Perhaps. HEIDEGGER: With my questions, I would only like to get at the place from which you speak of another night. FINK: If I have spoken of another, more original night, of the nightly abyss in explication of the sun fragment, I did so in preview of the death-life fragments. From there I have viewed the deeper sense of the phenomenon of closed ness of the earth and in a certain way also of the sea as the boundary of the sun's domain. Only when we first consider the relation of life and death will we see how the realm of life is the sun's domain and how a new dimension breaks open with the reference to death. The new dimension is neither the domain of openness nor only the closed ness of the earth, although the earth is an excellent symbol for the dimension of the more original night. Hegel speaks of the earth as the elementat-y i"dividuum into which the dead return. The dimension of the more original night is denoted by death. That dimension, however, is the realm of death, which is no land and has no extension, the no-man'sland, ... HEIDEGGER: ... that cannot he traversed and that also is no dimension. The difficulty lies in addressing the domain denoted by death. FINK: Perhaps language in its articulation is at home in the domain that is itself articulated, in the domain of the sun, in which one thing is separated from the other and set into relief against the other, and in which the individual has specific omline. If now, however, we understand £v not only in the sense of the dimension of openness, of the hrightnl·ss of lightning and the n:avra f(mnd in it, hut also as the more original night, as the mountain range of being [ da.1 Gebirg deJ Seim J which is no nmntryside, whkh has no name and is unspeakablc:-although not in the sense of a limit of languagl~-thcn we must also take in view a

55 second dimension in fv, alongside the dimension of the sun's domain. The dimension of brightness is imbedded in this second dimension, and death points to it. Still, that at which death points is a domain that nobody can find in life-time. The more fragments we read, the more the question marks accumulate for us. HEIDEGGER: In connection with what has been said concerning language, I would like to refer to the lecture "Sprache al~ Rythmus" ["Language as Rhythm] by Thrasybulos Georgiades, delivered in the lecture series "Die Sprac/z," ["Language"] of the Bavuian Academy of Fine Arts and the Berlin Academy of Arts, as well as in his book Musik und Rythmus bei den Griechen. 20 In both works, he has spoken excellently about Iangauge. Among other things, he asks about rhythm, and shows that {luoj.l.6(_; has nothing to do with {ltw (flow), but is to be understood as imprint. In recourse to Werner Jaeger, he appeals to a verse of Archilochos, Fr. 67a, where {luoj.1.6'.; has this meaning. The verse reads: y£yv
56

ings, was created neither by gods nor by humans; rather, it was always and is and will be eternal living fire kindled in measures and quenched in measures." At first we interpret only the second half of the fragment. Lightning, we could say, is the sudden fire, the sun is the fire in orderly passage of the course of time, but nug (IE(~wov [eternal living fire] is something that we do not find in the phenomenon like the lightning and the sun. HEJDEGGER: How do you wish to translate x60J.1.0~? FINK: I would like to pass over the first half of Fr. 30 and attempt to interpret only the second half. If we translate x6o!JO~ with world order or ornament, then we must bring that translation into connection with Fr. 124, where the talk is of the most beautiful x60J.1.0~ as a junk heap. When we now attempt to read and interpret Fr. 30 from the end, we must.also return to naivete. A phenomenal fire continues in burning. The conflagration of fire is a process in time. The fire was yesterday, is today and will be tomorrow. Now, however, my question is: are ltv at:£ [was always], fcmv [is], and fmaL [will be], in reference to 1tUQ at:£~wov, determinations of the ways of fire's being-in-time? Is the at:£~wov [eternal living] of fire thought by always-having-been, being-now, and coming-to-be? But must we think the fire in terms of the familiar way that we specify duration, with only the difference that the usual fire that is ignited lasts a while and goes out again and thus has not always been, is not always, and will not always be? How is at:£t;wov to be understood? Does it mean the perdurance of fire through the whole time? Do we not then think the fire named here by Heraclitus too naively, if we suppose that its distinct character would be that it always was, is present and will always be? I would rather suppose that we must think the other way around. The fire is not always past, present, and coming; rather, it is fire that first tears open having-been, being-now, and coming-to-be. Ht:JDF.GGER: But what is the subject of the second half of the sentcnl·e on your interpretation? For Diets it is XOOIJ.O~. of which he says that it has been brought forth neither by gods nor humans. Rather xOOIJO~ always was, is, and will be eternal living fire. FINK: I reject this translation. I understand 1tUQ [fire] as the subject of the second half of the sentence. Ht:tm:GGER: Do you make a break before ill' [rather]. so that the following has nothing to do with the preceding? FINK: The x60IJ.O~ as the beautiful joining of nav-ca is that which shines in fire. To this extent the first and second halves of the sentence have mm:h to do with one another. The fire is the productive power of bringing-forth. Gods and humans shine up and arc brought to unccmccalcd hcing only hel·ausc there is fire to which they stand in a preeminent rchllion.

57 HEIDEGGER: Then we must also put "the eternal living fire" as the subject of the second half of the sentence instead of Diels' translation "she" (i.e., the world order). FINK: When Heraclitus now says of eternal living fire that it is kindled after measures and quenched after measures, that appears to contradict the ~£ [eternal], and sounds like a shocking specification to us. HEIDEGGER: Let us at first leave this question out of account. In order to stay with what you have first said: do you reject saying that the world order is the fire? FINK: The world order is no work of gods and humans, but the work of the eternal living fire. It is not, however, the work of the fire that always was and is and will be, because the eternal living fire first tears open the three time dimensions of ·having-been, being-now, and coming-to-be. Heraclitus speaks in Fr. 30 first in a denial: the x60J.1.0~ is not brought forth (Diels' translation, "created," is out of place) by one of the gods or one of the humans. We can also say: the x60JW~ is not brought forth to appearance by one of the gods or by a human. Therein, we already hear the fiery character of fire. The x60J.1.0~ as the beautiful joining of :rtclvta comes forth to appearance in the shine of fire. That the x60JW~ as the beautiful jointed order is not brought forth to appearance by one of the gods or by a human, is first only to be understood in the sense that gods and humans have a share in the power of fire among all the beings of the x6oJ.W~; and they are productive. Gods and humans are productive, however, not in the manner of the most original :rtOLTJOL~ [production], which produces the :rtiiQ ~U;(I)()V. In the explication of Fr. 30, however, I wish first to question whether time characteristics are asserted in the term :rtiiQ ~{~(I)()V. The :rtiiQ ~{~(I)()V is neither like a process within time, nor is it comparable with what Kant calls the world stuff as the basis of the constantly extant time. The fire mentioned by Heraclitus is not in time, but is itself the time-allowing time that first and foremost lets IJv [was], E:an [is] and E:atm [will bej break out; it does not stand under these. If we tentatively take :rtiiQ ~{~(I)()V as the timeallowing, time-opening, then lid stands in a taut relationship to /Jv, EO'tL, and Eatal, and furthermore to what the concluding phrase of Fr. 30 concerns, in a taut relationship to the kindling after measures and tjUenching after measures. HEIDEGGER: For me the central question now is where you start out. Do you start out from ~v. EO'tl, and EO'tQL or rather from :rtiiQ llEL~(I)()V? FINK: I start out with :rtiiQ lld~wov and go from it to ~v. EO'tl, and fatal. If one reads word for word, the three-fold of time is said from lld~wov.

HEIDF.GGt:R: In other words, it is said out of what is perpetually, that it was, is, and will be.

58 FINK: This thought is hard to carry through. So long as we read the fragment naively, we must say that the talk is of an eternal living fire that always was and is and will be. Ht:IDEGGER: The ~v and EOl:UL have no sense in reference to cie (t;(I)()V: FINK: The ~v means what is gone; the EO'tat means being not yet. It is not fire that is past and will be; rather, fire first and foremost opens the way fur arising in time, tarrying in time, and going under in time. Fire as the time-allowing time first and foremost breaks open the three time ecstacies of past, present, and future. HEIDEGGER: There is the possibility for passing, so that it itself cannot always have been. But when you speak of time-allowing, in what sense do you mean that? FINK: In the sense of apportioning of time. Ht:IDt:GGt:R: You understand the allowing as apportioning. But how is time meant in the time-allowing? FINK: We must distinguish time-allowing and the apportioned time that things have in such a way that they have already been for a while, are present, and will also be yet a while. This manner of being-in-time belongs only to things; it does not, however, belong to the eternal living fire which first lets the three time ecstasies break out. 1tUQ cidt;wov is the tearing open of having-been, being-now and coming-to-be. That which stands in the shine of lire receives the time apportioned to its tarrying from this original opening of time. The fire sets measures. The hardness of the problem would disappear if one supposed that 1tUQ cidt;wov were determined by the temporal evidence of being-in-time. The question, however, is whether it is meant that the fire always was and is and will be, or whether a productive relation is to be thought between the fire and ~v. EO'tL, and EO'taL. Hum:GGt:K: When you speak of the time-allowing of 1tUQ cidt;wov, don't you mean that in the ordinary sense, as we sometimes say, "someone allows another time"? FINK: The time that the fire allows, by apportioning time to things, is no empty time form, no medium separated from content, but is, so to speak, time with its coment. Ht:nn:ca;t:K: Of the time thus given. one must say: it tarries. It is not a depository in which things appear as dispensed; rather, time as apportioned is already referred to that whid1 tarries. FINK: To what is individual. lh:mu;<;t:K: Lei us leave aside what is individual. Hlll do you wish lo say that Wl~ g-u lx:yond the ordinary compn:hension of tinu: with your interpretation of tim<' and of time-allowing? FINK: I pron·ed lirsl from the strangeness thai m)Q
59 rather, it is the time-forming in the sense of the apportioning of time for all that is in time. We have previously thought this apportioning of time in the driving lightningbolt and in the fire of"HA.to~. We may not determine the time of fire, which forms the times for "ta nc1vta, in a captious reference from concepts of being-in-time back to the most original time. The easy version runs: Fire was always and is and will be. Comprehended thus, fire is something standing, extant and merely lying there, which subsists through the course of time. This remaining is characterized by the temporal dimensions of having-been, being-now and coming-to-be. But then one already has time, and one brings temporal concepts to bear on the time-forming fire. The more difficult version, on the contrary, runs: That the ~v. E
FINK: The fire is that which brings-forth-to-appearance. HEIDEGGER: If we understand fire only as a flash in the pan, it would yield no shining. FINK: From out of shining we must think back to x60J.W~. It is what shines up in the shine of fire. First we must ask ourselves how, by way of the innertemporal characteristic of nilQ Ctt:£~(1)()V, can nilQ Ctt:£~(J)()V be referred to as that which first of all releases past, present, and future from out of itself? HunEGGER: You speak of releasing. How is this usage to be understood more closely? Nature is also released with Hegel. How does nilQ Ctt:£~(J)()V release past, present, and future? For me the question is whether that which subsequently comes in any way supports your interpretation, or whether that which comes makes your interpretation possible. FINK: What troubles me is the taut relationship between cid~(J)()V and ~v. E
60 and the three time determinations toward the time forming of 3t'UQ ad~wov, in the sense of the letting spring up of having-been, beingpresent, and coming-to-be, has no clue, and cannot, therefore, be rightly carried through. FINK: For me the clue is this, that it is impossible to talk of 3t'UQ llEC~wov as within time. Otherwise, it becomes a thing that happens in the world, perhaps also the highest thing, the summum ens, which, however, is an ens in the midst of things. Seen thus, it would be subordinate to time. My question is, however, whether the determinations of beingin-time are not subordinated to xiiQ li£(~(J)()V. HEIDEGGER: So far as I can see, there is only this clue, that 3t'UQ llEC~wov is no thing and that, therefore, no "was," "is" and "will be" can be predicated of it, ... FINK: ... and also no perpetuity in the ordinary sense. HEIDEGGER: We stand before the question of how 3t'UQ llEC~wov relates itself to time. One does not get further. In the summer semester of 1923 in Marburg, while working out Being and Ti7TU!, I held a lecture on the history of the concept of time. As I investigated the archaic idea of time with Pindar and Sophocles, it was striking that nowhere is time spoken of in the sense of the sequence. Rather, time is there taken in view as that which first grants the sequence-similarly as in the last paragraphs of Being and Ti7TU!, although the problem is there viewed from Dasein.--I look at my watch and find that it is three minutes before 7 P.M. Where is the time there? Try to find it.

6 rtiiQ and m1vta (Correlated Fragments: 30, 124, 66, 76, 31).

The seminar began with the report of one of the participants on Hermann Frankel, "Die Zeilauffassung in tier Friihgriechischen Lileratur," printed in Wege und Formenfriihgriechischen Denkms, 1960. 11 FINK: In her report, she has shown that in Homer xQ6voc; [time] means the long, lingering time, the endurance of time understood in awaiting, or rather the time that still remains for mortals who suffer long. Both are specific forms of time. HEIDEGGER: It is important for us that there is no theoretical conceptual determination of time as time with Homer and Hesiod. Rather, both speak of time only out of experience. FINK: Professor Heidegger's question started out from Frankel's expression of day as a unity of encounter, i.e., from the idea of a manner of givenness according to the encounter. The question was whether time refers to an encountering subject, or is rather to be understood as concrete time in the sense of the different ways that we are ip time, excepting that we encounter time. It is dangerous if we speak about the encounter of time, because it is then referred to consciousness. Then we move into the distinction of the time of consciousness, in which we live, and objective time, which is separated from subjectively encountered time. The question was what specific time is; whether the specificity of time is to be grasped from its encountered character or from another approach, which lies outside the distinction of subjective and objective time. HEIDEGGER: I object to the expression "unity of encounter." When it was said by one of the participants that Homer presents a specific idea of time, and that this specificity rests in the encounter of long tarrying and waiting, this is correct. I object only to the formulation. For the Greeks did not "encounter." Let us break off discussion connected with the report, because we lose too much time otherwise. But what does it mean when we say that we lose time? On what presupposition can we lose time at all? PARTICIPANT: Only when time is limited to us can we lose time. HEIDEGGF.R: Being limited is not decisive. Rather, in order to lose something, we must have it. I can only lose time, if I have time. If I say that I have no time, how is time then characterized? PARTICIPANT: I presuppose that time is available to me. HJ::JDE<;GER: Regarding time, that means that it is characterized as time for ....

62 PARTICIPANT: As time for this, time is not the time for something else. For it is time to do this rather than something else. HEIDEGGER: Time, as "not the time," is the privative characterization of time. The one character of time that we have emphasized is time as time for .... Another character of time to which I would like to refer shows itself when I look at the clock and say that it is 5:45 P.M. Now I ask, where is time? PARTICIPANT: Therewith, time shows itself as clock-time or measured time. HEIDEGGER: When I look at the clock and say that it is 5:45 P.M., and ask where time is, does this question make sense at all? PARTICIPANT: It is a problem whether one can ask where time is. HEIDEGGER: Hence, I ask you, can one ask at all where time is? PARTICIPANT: In 1962, in your lecture "Zeit und Sein," you have said that time is prespatial. 22 Accordingly, that would mean that one cannot ask where time is. HEIDEGGER: On the other hand, we read off the time from the clock. I look at the clock and read that it is 5:45 P.M. Clearly something doesn't make sense here. With Hegel, we must write it on a sheet of paper. But how? We must write that now it is 5:45 P.M. In the now, we thus have time. I do mean time with the now. We will come back to this question when we enter into Fr. 30 and observe the difficulty that lies in the saying of~v. fatLV, and fataL in reference to JriiQ lld~(I)()V. It seems to me that here would be the place to consider whether time is mentioned at all in Fr. 30. FINK: Yet Heraclitus speaks of ad~. ~atL, and fataL. HEIDEGGER: If we say that Fr. 30 speaks of time, do we go beyond the text? FINK: But still, Heraclitus clearly used time determinations. HEIDEGGER: That means, therefore, that he did not speak thematically about time. This observation is important in order to follow up the step that you pursue in your interpretation of Fr. 30, the step in which you determine the relationship of 1tUQ lu:(~wov and x60JW~. We can read the fragment also trivially, if we say that ~. ~atL and fataL are the anticipatory interpretation of lu:(~wov. In this case, what would ll£( mean? PARTICIPANT: The ad would be understood as a connection of dvm [to be], ~aEa6m [about to be], and yEVea6m [to have been]. HEIDEGGt:R: What kind of a connection is that? If we read Fr. 30 almost trivially and understand ~v. fatl, and fataL as anticipatory interpretation of ltd, what does it then mean? Is time presupposed in "always"? PARTICIPANT: The "always" can be an innertemporal detennination.

63

HEIDEGGER: The "always" is then understood as "at all times," "permanent." In Latin one speaks of the sempilemitas [always-eternity). That we do not really make progress here is based on the fact that in the fragment time is not spoken about thematically; nevertheless, the interpretation attempts to take time into view in a decisive sense. Only thus, I believe, can we make clear to ourselves the way of your interpretation. While, according to the trivial rendition, the first half of the sentence says that the x60JW~ is brought forth neither by one of the gods nor by a human, and the second half, which begins with QUa, says that the x6aJW~ always was, is, and will be eternal-living fire, according to your interpretation the subject of the second half of the sentence is not x60JW~ but niiQ. FINK: According to the smoother version, as Diels proposes, fire is a predicative determination of x60JW~· Yet the antecedent phrase should already draw attention. If we translate, "this x60JW~ is brought forth to appearance neither by one of the gods nor by a human," then x60JW~­ although spoken negatively-moves into view as something brought forth. Thereby, the connection to fire as that which brings forth is already given. We do not understand fire as a predicative determination of x60JW~; rather, we understand x60JW~ from out of fire as the beautiful joining of 'tcl:rtavta which is brought forth to appearance neither by one of the gods nor by a human. There was always and is and will be eternal-living fire in the light-shine of which the beautiful joining of 'tel :rtclvta shines up. "It always was and is and will be" we must understand in the sense of "there is." Thus seen, x60JW~ is comprehended from out of fire, and not fire from out of x60JW~. This rendition would fit in with the trail in which we have interpreted the connection of lightning and sun to 'ta :rtclvta up to now. The reference of niiQ and x60JW~ would be a special relationship of fv and :rtclvta, according to which 'ta :rtclvta stand in the light-shine of fire. The smoother rendition has the advantage that the subject remains the same in both halves of the sentence. Thus, fire becomes a determination of x60JW~ instead of, the other way around, x6aJW~ being brought forth to appearance in the shine of fire. Only if the subject in the second half of the sentence is not x60JW~. is there a superiority of fire vis-a-vis x60JW~. Here we could also point to Fr. 124: ooa:rtEQ OclQJ.I.« dxfJ XEXUJA.ivwv 6 xcilltmo~ (6) x60JW~· Diels translates: "(Like) a heap of things (?) scattered at random, the most beautiful (world) order." Here the most beautiful world order is said to be like a junk heap. HEJDEGGER: One could translate xcilltmo~ x60JW~: the x60JW~ as it can only be in general. FINK: The most beautiful x60JW~. the most beautiful ordered entirety of all:rtavta, comes forth to appearance in the shine of fire. If this x6aJW~ is like a junk heap, we have a hard contrast between xcillLO'tO~,

64 which is referred to x6a~c;. and the derogatory manner of talking about OOQJ.la. To what extent can the most beautiful xoa~c; be compared to a heap of scattered things? To the extent that we compare it with the m1Q that brings fonh. Compared with the fire that brings fonh to appearance, the most beautiful x6a~c; seems like a heap of scattered things. If we read Fr. 124 in this way, it can support our interpretation of Fr. 30, which depends on the superiority of fire vis-a-vis the x6a~c;. HEIDEGGER: It is difficult for me to comprehend that the most beautiful x6~c; stands in need of yet another determination. FINK: I understand the fragment such that the most beautiful x6a~c; receives the negative character of a heap of scattered things in reference to the fv of 1tUQ. HEIDEGGER: Thus, the question is whether Fr. 124 can be used as support for the explication of Fr. 30. FINK: The xclllunoc; x6~c; can be characterized as a confused heap not only in reference to the fv of m1Q, but also in reference to the other fv, which first comes to view with the dimension of death. HEIDEGGER: Above all, I am concerned to make clear to the participants the manner in which you proceed. You set yourself off from the more naive, smoother version and prefer the more difficult version. If we read Fr. 30 smoothly, then it concerns a statement about the x6~c; that is brought fonh neither by one of the gods nor by a human, but that always was, is, and will be eternal-living fire. Then the x6~c; is something that is. This statement is then, as you wish to say, completely un philosophical. FINK: A certain philosophical element would then lie only in the fu:(, in the eternalness of the world. HEIDEGGER: You say that, however, under the presupposition that Heraclitus is a philosopher. In Heraclitus' time, however, there were as yet no philosophers. FINK: To be sure, Heraclitus is no philosopher, but he is still a cp(A.oc; toil oocpou, a friend of oocp6v. HEIDEGGER: That means that you do not interpret Heraclitus metaphysically. As against the naive rendition, you require a philosophical rendition that is not yet metaphysical. From what hermeneutical position do you attempt that? FINK: It puzzles me that 1tUQ ci££~wov should be spoken of as the essential predicate of x6aJ.LOc;, while XOOJ.Loc;, as the joining of mlvta, steered hy lightning and standing in the light-shine of "HA.LOc;, can not itself he the fire but is the work of fire. In the antecedent phrase it is said that this XOOJ.lO<; is brought forth to appearance neither by one of the gods nor hy a human. Surprisingly, we must now ask to what extent it can be sairl that no human has bmught forth the entire order of things. This negation is only possible l>eGlliSC humans arc distinguished by a

65 productive [poU.ti~cJu.] power. But this negation sounds paradoxical, because it would never readily occur to anybody that a human has brought forth the entire order of :n:~a. Humans do not bring forth the xoOJ.LOc;; in the sense of the entire joining of :n:avta, except the xOOJ.LOc;; in the sense of the :n:6A.tc;; [city]; while the gods bring forth the XOOJ.LOc;; in the sense of the world-rule, though in a limited manner in so far as they cannot intervene in the power of MoiQJ.lFVOV j.l.t'tQ
66 EO'taL also pertains to what shines up in the shine of fire. We understand

the three time determinations not as temporal marks of distinction of miQ ad~wov but, the other way around, from out of the ad of :n:iiQ we understand the having been, the now, and the coming of things that come forth to appearance in the shine of fire. Things have their beingin-time in the manner of originating, tarrying, and disappearing. While they tarry, they spread themselves out between the now, the having been, and the coming. HEIDEGGER: In the fragment, "was," "is," and "will be" are mentioned. You, however, speak of having-been, being-present, and coming-to-be. Clearly, it is a matter of something different. While time determinations are used in the fragment, in your interpretation you take time as such to be thematic. FINK: The always living source of time can only be addressed with names taken from 'tel J'tCJV'ta. HEIDEGGER: I agree with that, but what concerns me now is the hint that ~v does not mean having-been as having-been. FINK: I am amazed at the hard bond of :ltUQ ad~(J)()V and ~v, EO'tLV, and EO'taL. Perhaps we can say that in a certain manner it cannot be said of :n:iiQ ad~wov that it only is, because it is not eternal. Rather, we must say that as the brightness of the lightning and sun brings :n:aV'ta forth to appearance and into the outline of its gestalt, so it is the ad of :n:iiQ that brings it about that :n:aV'ta, which stand in the light-shine of fire, were, are, and will be. However, the difficulty lies in the fact that the characteristic of being-in-time of J'tcJV'ta places itself back upon miQ ad~wov as the source of the ways of being-in-time. Of miQ ad~wov, however, one cannot say that it was, is, and will be. For then one comprehends it like something extant. What would it mean to say that :n:iiQ ad~wov is now? Does it have a specific age, so that it is older in each moment? And what would it mean to say that it always was and will be? Always having-been means that it has past times behind it, just as coming-to-be means that it has a future before it. Can one say of :n:iiQ ad~wov that it has past times behind it, that it now has presence and has a coming presence in the future? Here :n:iiQ ad~wov is mentioned in the manner in which things are in time, spring forth, tarry. and disappear, have past, preser1t, and future. But :n:iiQ ad~wov, on its part, lets past, present, and coming spring forth. We must be wary of comprehending m}Q ad~wov as a perpetual stock. HEJDEGGER: For me, the question is, what is the reason for this reversed step of the interpretation. For you, the ad becomes the source l(>r ~v. EO'tLV, and EO'taL. FINK: As to the source of the three time determinations, the reason for my revet·sed interpretive step lies in the fact that :n:iiQ adl;wov, which is not itself innertemporal, is addressed by means of what is first made

67 possible through it. Herein lies a covering of the original by the derivative. Were we to appease ourselves with the immediate wording of the fragment, and give preference to the smoother rendition, then :niiQ (tE(~(J)()V would have past and future; and it would now no longer be what it was, and not yet be that which it is coming to be. HEIDEGGER: We have said that we no longer interpret metaphysically a text that is not yet metaphysical. Is the no-longer-metaphysical already included i.,n the not-yet-metaphysical. FINK: That would be Heraclitus interpreted by Heidegger. HEIDEGGER: It does not concern me to interpret Heraclitus by Heidegger; rather, the elaboration of the reasons for your interpretation concerns me. Both of us are in agreement that if we speak with a thinker, we must heed what is unsaid in what is said. The question is only which way leads to this, and of what kind is the foundation of the interpretive step. To answer this question seems to me especially difficult in reference to time in Fr. 30. Consequently, I have asked about the "always." How should we understand it? In the setting of your interpretation, what does "always" mean? If I ask you, is it the nunc stans [the standing now), and you answer no, then I ask, what is it? Here we are faced with a question mark. FINK: The special difficulty lies in the fact that what precedes as the source of time cannot be said at all in appropriate manner. In reference to the source of time, we find ourselves in a special predicament. HEIDEGGER: You rightly emphasize the predicament in which we find ourselves. The difficulty before which we stand consists not only in the step of thought but also in our rethinking. We must have sufficient clarity about what is to be thought in order to hear Heraclitus in the correct manner. Nevertheless we cannot resolve what has to be thought in terms of one fragment; rather, we must-as you have already saidhave all the fragments in view for the interpretation of one fragment. I am again and again concerned to make clear the sequence of steps of your interpretation. Therefore, I have indicated that time becomes thematic with your step of thought, while in Fr. 30 time comes to view only as an understanding of time, without becoming thematic for Heraclitus. FISK: Concerning the phrase, ~v aEi XQL EO'tLV xai. f(J"[QL :niiQ Ct£L~(J}()V [it was always and is and will be eternal-living fire], I will not mntend that we have within easy reach an interpretive possibility that will allow us to address the source of time, which is hidden by intratemporal determinations, without intratemporal determinations. For that would mean that we would already be able to retrieve the premetaphysical language. In this connection, let us glance at Fr. 66, which should be correlated now only in order to indicate the superiority of :niig vis-a-vis x6oJW<; and

fi8 1:a naV'ta. It runs: nciV'ta yaQ 1:0 nilQ tmk80v XQLVEi: xai. xa'taA.fJ'tpE'taL. Diels translates: "For fire, having come upon them, will judge and apprehend (condemn) all things." In this translation it is questionable whether XQLVEL must be translated as "will judge" in the sense of an end situation, or whether it must not rather be translated as "will divide." And it is questionable whether xa'taAfJ'tpnaL must be comprehended as "will be struck into its imprint." We must then say that fire will, at the time it brings 'ta nciV'ta forth to appearance, divide them and strike each thing into its imprint. Thus, the superiority of fire is also indicated here vis-a-vis 1:a naV'ta, which are mentioned in Fr. 30 by the name of the x60J.1.0!!;, that is, the entire order. The more difficult rendition of Fr. 30, suggested by me, requires that the subject of the first and second halves of the sentence changes. According to the smoother rendition, the subject of the antecedent phrase, XOOJ.I.OI!;, will also be retained in the second half. Seen linguistically, this version might be the more easy; but seen thoughtfully, it appears to me objectionable. The more difficult rendition implies that in the antecedent xOOJ.I.O!!; comes into view and is named as something brought forth, but XOO).lOI!; is held away from the power of gods ;and humans to bring forth. As something brought forth, the XOOJ.I.O!!;. which arises neither from the no(T]OL!!; of gods nor of humans, points to fire's bringing-forth-to-appearance. Therefore, the subject can no longer be XOOJ.I.O!!; in the second half of the sentence. For otherwise nUQ cit:£~wov would be a predicative determination of XOOJ.I.O!!;, notwithstanding the fact that x60).l0!!; is something brought forth by fire. Thus, we must read: neither a god nor a human brought the XOOJ.lOI!; forth to appearance; rather, it was always and is and will always be living firewhich brings the XOO).lO!!; forth to appearance. We can understand the phrase, "was always and is and will be," almost in the sense of "there is." But the way in which there is nUQ ad~wov is the manner in which nuQ cit:£~wov bestows the three ways of being-in-time on n
69 life and death-a problem to which we will pay attention separately. Also wncerning Fr. 31, we wish to use here only the words of Heraclitus himself in OUT consideration: 1tUQO~ 1:Q01tUL1tQOnOV 8QA.aaaa. 8aAclOOTJ~ b£ 1:0 J.lEv i'jJ.lLOU yiJ, 1:0 b£ i'jJ.lLau 1tQTicmlQ· (yiJ) 8clllaaaa OLaxtnm, xai. J.lFtQEFtaL d~ l:Ov a01:0v )..Oyov, oxoio~ n{.)Oa8EV ~v ft yEVta8m yiJ. Diels translates: "Change of fire: first sea; of sea, however, one half earth, the other half breath of fire. The earth melts as sea, and this receives its measure according to the same sense (relationship) as it acknowledged hefore it became earth." HEIDEGGER: Let me refer at this point to an essay by Bruno Snell on 1:Q01ttl in Hermes 61, 1926. FINK: Diets translates, "Change of fire," while Heraclitus speaks in the plural of 1:Q01ta£, changes, transformations. But how should we understand the transition of fire into sea and from sea into earth and breath of fire, as well as from earth into sea and sea into fire? Is it here a question of the familiar phenomenon of one aggregate state passing over into the other? Is it intended here that some elements go over and turn themselves into others? Does Heraclitus speak of transformations of elements, such as we see aggregate states going over; as, for instance, liquid goes over into steam or fire into smoke? What are the 1:Q01ta£? Does Heraclitus speak of a multitude because fire converts itself into a series of different things? At first, it looks like a series: fire converts itself into sea, sea converts itself half into earth and half into breath of fire. Can we inquire here at all about everyday, familiar kinds of events? From the phenomenon, we know only the change of aggregate states. However, we are not witnesses of a cosmogonic process. What is very difficult to see is the conversion of fire into sea, while the sea, that is, water, is nevertheless that which most quenches fire. The general question is whether we are right if we take the transformations of fire as if everything were first fire, and as if there were then a separation of water, of which one half would be earth and the other half the breath of fire. Presumably, we are not dealing at all with a relationship of mixing in sequence and at the level of nclvl:a. Rather, I would suppose that the fire is opposed to the sea, the earth, and the breath of fire, that the fire thus relates itself in opposition to the sea, the earth and the breath of fire as xq~uuvo~ and '1-IA.Lo~ are in opposition to naVTu. The fire, as the £v, would then turn about in different ways, as 1:a naVTa show themselves. This interpretation should at first be formulated only as a question. If we unclt-rstand 1:Q01ttl only as turning over in a local motion, Fr. 31 is not at all imelligible. For we cannot say that fire turns into water, earth, and hrt·ath of fire in a local motion. lf1:Q01ttl means turning in a local motion, what then do the overturnings of fire mean? Nevertheless, Heraclitus says that fire turns first into sea. Yet here a local motion is evidently not thought. Does lire move in such a way that it first becomes water, and

70 does water move in such a way that half becomes earth and the other half becomes breath of fire? If we understand 't(K>na£ in this sense, then we take fire as a kind of primary substance, which assumes different forms of appearance in sequence. My question, however, is whether one can make n:uQC)~ 't(Kln:a£ clear by the changeover of aggregate states familiar to us. HEIDEGGER: Would you say that fire stands behind everything? What is questionable, however, is what "behind" means here; above all, whether fire stands behind everything in the manner of a primary substance, ... FINK: ... or whether one must not begin here also from the relatedness of fv and n:avta, and whether one must give up the thought of a basic matter. Our task here will again be to work out the more difficult rendition.

7 Difference of Interpretation: Truth of Being (Fragment 16) or Cosmological Perspective (Fragment 64).-Heraclitus and the Matter of Thinking. -The Not-Yet-Metaphysical and the No-Longer-Metaphysicai.-Hegel's Relationship to the Greeks.-n:uQ(>~ 'tQ<>n:a( and Dawn. (Correlated Fragments: 31, 76).

HEJDEGGER: Since we have interrupted our seminar for three weeks over Christmas, a shon synopsis of the way of our undertaking till now might prove useful. If an outsider were to ask you what we work at in our seminar, how would you answer such a question? PARTICIPANT: Discussion of the problem of time in Fr. 30 was central in the last hours before Christmas. HEJDEGGER: In other words, you have indeed let yourself be misled by the explication of Fr. 30 which Mr. Fink has given. For-as we have emphasized again and again-time does not come to the fore at all with Heraclitus. PARTICIPANT: But Fr. 30 leads to time determinations, and our question was how these ought to be understood. HEJDEGGER: With that, you go into a special question. But if somebody asked you what we work at in our Heraclitus seminar, and if he wanted to hear not about individual questions but about the whole; if he asked what we have begun with, what would your answer be? PARTICIPANT: We have begun with a methodical preliminary consideration, that is, with the question of how Heraclitus is to be understood. Ht:JDEG~. Ht:mt:c;Gt:R: In the explication, have we begun with 'tel :7tavta or with lightning? For it is imponam to distinguish that. PARTICII'ANT: First, we have asked ourselves how 'tel :7tclvta is to be translated: then, we turned to the lightning: and finally, we have looked at all the fragments in which 'tel :7tavta is mentioned.

7'2 HEIDEGGER: Mr. Fink has thus begun the explication of Heraclitus with the lightning. Is this beginning a matter of course? Is it not surprising? PARTICIPANT: If one considers the starting points made elsewhere, this beginning is unusual. HEIDEGGER: Mr. Fink, who hegins with the lightning, is, as it were, struck by lightning. With what does Heidegger begin? PARTICIPANT: With the A6yo~ [gathering-process). HEIDEGGER: And beside that ... PARTICIPANT: ... with 'AA.l'J8£La [nonconcealment). 23 HEIDEGGER: But how does Heidegger come to 'AA.l'J8£La? PARTICIPANT: By Fr. 16: TO l.lTJ Oirv6v 1tOTE 1t00~ av 'tl~ A.
73 PARTICIPANT: ... our taking into view the relationship between lightning and Tel :rtc1vta. HEIDEGGER: What follows after that? PARTICIPANT: An explication of Fr. II. HEIDEGGER: But how do we come to this fragment? What is the pertinent motif that leads us from Fr. 64 to Fr. II? PARTICIPANT: What Heraclitus himself said gave us support for this transition. In Fr. 64, he speaks of Ta m1vta, in Fr. II of :rtciv tQ:rtETov, which we have understood as :rtclVTQ W~ fQ:rtETcl. HEIDEGGER: But where lay the pertinent support for such a procedure? PARTICIPANT: Lightning (lightning bolt) Jed US to :rtAYr'! (blow). HEIDEGGER: Besides, we saw a relevant connection between steering (oiax(~EL) and driving (VEJ.LETaL). Therefore, we took up first the relationship of lightning and Tel xc1vta, and finally, we took up the relationship of :rtA'lyTJ and miv tQ:rtETOV. Then we turned ... PARTICIPANT: ... to the sun fragments. HEIDEGGER: The explication began with the lightning or lightning bolt, then turned to the sun, and after that to nUQ m(~(OOV. Later, we must specify more exactly the references of lightning, sun, and fire. What we have thematically treated up to this point has now become clear. But how does Mr. Fink proceed in explication of the fragments? PARTICIPANT: The explication has become a problem for us. HEIDEGGER: To what extent is the explication a problem? How would you characterize the procedure of Mr. Fink? The manner of his explication is by no means to be taken for granted, but is rather to be designated as venturesome. PARTICIPANT: More has been said in the interpretation of the fragments than stands in them. HEIDEGGER: The interpretation is hazardous. But Mr. Fink does not interpret arbitrarily; rather, he has his grounds for preferring the more difficult rendition and the hardness of the problem. What is the problem we are concerned with here? With what right does he prefer the more difficult rendition? Let us take Fr. 30 as an example. PARTICIPANT: In each case we have preferred the more difficult rendition so that the subject matter comes to the f(>re. HEIDEGGER: What matter is that? PARTICIPANT: The matter is already suggested in a manifold, JX'rhaps most expli(-itly in reference to the time question. HEJJ>EC;GER: I do not allow talk about time now. Let us bracket being and time now. What matter is treated that should come to the lim~? Think of Mr. Fink's introdtu:tory remarks. PARTICIPANT: The matter of thinking. HEJJ>EGGEK: And the matter of thinking is? We must say that the

74 matter of thinking is that which we seek, that of which we still do not know. The same outsider, after he has listened to what you answer to his question, could reply to you that when we deal with Heraclitus we sit, as it were, in an ivory tower. For what we are doing would have nothing to do with technology and industrial society; rather, it is nothing but worn-out stories. What would be the answer here? PARTICIPANT: It is doubtful that we are dealing here with worn out stories. For we do not take Heraclitus as a thinker of the past. It is rather our intention to bring something to the fore in the exposition of Heraclitus that is possibly something other or quite the same. For us, there is no concern for an exposition that has to do with a past matter. HEJDEGGER: Do we thus provide no contribution to Heraclitus research? PARTICIPANT: I would not say that, because our problematic can also be helpful for research. HEJDEGGER: We seek the determination of the matter of thinking in conversation with Heraclitus. We intend thereby no thematic contribution to Heraclitus research. We are not interested in this direction. Perhaps what we are doing is also inaccessible for Heraclitus research. The way and manner in which we speak with the fragments and listen to them is not the simple, everyday way and manner of forming an opinion, as when we read the newspaper. Mr. Fink forces you to think otherwise. The greater difficulty of the more difficult rendition is not only related by degrees to our capacity of apprehension. What seems here like a grammatical comparative is presumably another distinction. PARTICIPANT: A comparative presupposes that something which stands in a context gets compared. Between the simple, everyday thinking and understanding and that which is called the more difficult rendition, there is clearly a gulf that is worthy of emphasis. HEIDEGGER: We have thus looked at the reference of 'tel 1tavta and lightning, 'tel 1tclvta and sun, 'tel 1tO.vta and fire. In Fr. 7, 1tavta 'tel OV'ta was mentioned. In the reference of 'tel 1tclvta to lightning, to the sun, to fire and to fv, which we have come across, what is the greater difficulty of the more difficult rendition in distinction to the naive manner of reading? PARTICIPANT: The question is whether the reference of 1tavta to lightning, to the sun, to fire, to rv, to 1tOAfiJ.O~. or to Myo~ is in each case different, or whether the expressed multiplicity of that to which 'tel 1tavta refers is only the name of a manifold. HF.n>t:GGER: The difficulty before which we stand is the manifold of lightning, the sun, fire, fv, war and wyo~ in their relationship to 'tCx 1tO.vta, or to 'ta t"ivta. The manifold does not belong to 1tavta or to ovta. Rut to wll
75 form a totality, and that on the other hand tel m1vta are supposed to stand in a reference to something that does not belong to the totality. HEIDEGGER: You would say that with the totality we have everything, that with it we are at the end of thinking. On the other hand, a manifold is mentioned that exceeds the totality. If tel :rtc1vta is the totality of l>vta, what is as a whole, is there still something which leads further? PARTICIPANT: Although you have said that the word "being" should he bracketed, we cannot now refrain from naming being as what leads further than what is as a whole. HEIDEGGER: Till now, the conversation was not about being. Being is something that is not an entity and that does not belong to what is as a whole. The more difficult rendition consists in this, that we do not read the fragments ontically, as we read the newspaper, that reading of the fragments is not concerned with things that become clear simply. Rather, the difficulty is that here it is obviously a matter of a kind of thinking that lets itself into something that is inaccessible to direct representation and thought: that is the genuine background. Another difficulty is the following. The kind of thinking that thinks what is as a whole in regard to being is the way of thought of metaphysics. Now we said in the last seminar that Heraclitus does not yet think metaphysically, whereas we no longer attempt to think metaphysically. Has the "not-yet-metaphysical" no reference at all to metaphysics? One could suppose the "not-yet" to be cut off from what follows, from metaphysics. The "not-yet" could, however, also be an "already," a certain preparation, which only we see as we do, and must see as we do, whereas Heraclitus could not see it. But what about the "no-longermetaphysical"? PARTICIPANT: This characterization of our thinking is temporarily unavoidable, because we simply cannot put aside the history of metaphysics from which we come. On the other hand, regarding what the "not-yet-metaphysical" deals with, perhaps too much is already said in this characterization. Ht:mt:G
76 metaphysics still clings to us, that we are not free of it. Where within Western philosophy is the relationship of epochs to each other thought in most decisive manner? PARTICIPANT: With Hegel. HEIDEGGER: If we say that we no longer attempt to think metaphysically, but remain nevertheless referred to metaphysics, then we could designate this relationship in Hegelian fashion as sublation. None of us knows whether metaphysics will reappear. In any case, the "no-longermetaphysical" is more difficult to specify than the "not-yetmetaphysical." But what about Hegel and the Greeks? Doesn't he take them to some extent all in the same breath? PARTICIPANT: With Hegel, another understanding is presented of what a beginning is. HEIDEGGER: The question about the beginning is too difficult for us now. The answer which I wish is simpler. What character, according to Hegel, has Greek thinking for philosophy? PARTICIPANT: A character of preparation. HEIDEGGER: This answer is too general. More specifically said ... PARTICIPANT: In the preface to the Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel says that everything depends on comprehending and expressing truth not only as substance, but just as much as subject. HEIDEGGER: How is that to be understood? But first: is the "Preface" you mention the preface to the Phenomenology~ PARTICIPANT: It is the preface to the system of science, whereas the "Introduction" is the real preface to the Phenomenology. HEIDEGGER: The "Preface" thus pertains to the Logic, and not only to the Phenomnwlogy of Mind. In the "Preface" Hegel says something fundamental about philosophy, that it should think the truth not only as substance, but also as subject. In Greek, substance means ... PARTICIPANT: ... im:oXE£JA£VOV, and what is underlying. HEIDEGGER: How is substance thought by Hegel? If I say that the house is big or tall, how is the manner of thinking that only thinks substance to be characterized? What is not thought here? PARTICIPANT: The movement between the house and being tall. HEIDEGGER: The Greeks, who according to Hegel think only of substance, Ul'tOXELflEVOV, have categories for this. PARTICIPANT: The movement can only come into view when yet another basis supervenes, the subject. HEIDEGGER: When it is said that the house is tall, what is not thought therein? PARTICIPANT: The one who thinks. Hnm:c;ca:R: Thus, what kind of thinking is that which simply views imoxf£JlfVOV and not the subject? PARTICIPANT: I hesitate to say the overused words. HEJDEGGER: In philosophy no word or concept is overused. We

77 must think the concepts new each day. We have, for example, the statement that this glass is full. Something is said, therewith, about what lies before us, but the reference to an I is not thought. When this reference becomes thematic for thinking, f(n· the I, then what lies before us becomes what lies opposite us, that is, it becomes an object. In Greek there are no objects. What does object mean in the Middle Ages? What does it mean literally? PARTICIPANT: What is thrown up against. HEJDEGGER: The object is what is thrown up against whom? Can you throw the glass up against yourself? How can I throw something up against myself, without something happening? What does subiectum (substance] mean in the Middle Ages? What does it mean literally? PARTICIPANT: What is thrown under. HEJDEGGER: For medieval thinking, the glass is a .mbiectum, which is the translation ofunoxdj.I.£\'OV. Obiectum [representation], forthe Middle Ages, meant, on the contrary, what is represented. A golden mountain is an object. Thus the object here is that which is precisely not objective. It is subjective. I have asked how the Greeks think according to Hegel's interpretation. We have said that in their thinking the reference to the subject does not become thematic. But were the Greeks still thoughtful? For Hegel, nevertheless, their thinking was a turning toward what lies before and what underlies, which Hegel called the thinking of the immediate. The immediate is that between which nothing intervenes. Hegel characterized all of Greek thought as a phase of immediacy. For him, philosophy first reaches solid land with Descartes, by beginning with the I. PARTICIPANT: But Hegel saw a break already with Socrates, a turning toward subjectivity that goes along with mores, in so far as these become morality. HEJDEGGER: That Hegel sees a break with Socrates has a still simpler ground. When he characterizes Greek thinking as a whole as a phase of immediacy, he does not level down inner distinctions like that between Anaxagoras and Aristotle. Within the phase of immediacy, he SCl'S a division comprehended by the same three-fold scheme of immediacy-mediation-unity. He does not, thereby, apply an arbitrary sc.·herne; rather, he thinks out of that which is for him the truth in the sense of the absolute certainty of the absolute spirit. Nevertheless, the dassification of metaphysics and Greek thinking is not so easy for us, bel· a use the question about the determination of Greek thinking is something that we must lirst put to question and awaken as a question. The question from the seminar before last, concerning what the spen1lative means with Hegel, still r·emains unanswered. PARTICIPANT: Spel·ulation for Hegel means the view [Amclwwmg] of eternal truth. HEJDEGGER: This answer is too general and sounds only approxi-

78 mate. With such academic questions, one has no recourse to an index, but to the Encyclopedia. There the speculative is a determination of the logical. How many determinations are there and what are the remaining ones? PARTICIPANT: In all there are three dimensions of the logical, which correspond to the three determinations already named, immediacy, mediation, and unity. HEIDEGGER: Are the three determinations of the logical three things side-by-side? Evidently not. The first moment, which corresponds to immediacy, is the abstract. What does abstract mean with Hegel? PARTICIPANT: What is separated and isolated. HEIDEGGER: Better: the thinking of one-sidedness, which only thinks one side. It is peculiar that the immediate should be the abstract, while for us the immediate is rather the concrete. But Hegel calls the immediate abstract in so far as one looks at the side of givenness and not at the side of the I. The second moment of the logical is the dialectical, the third is the speculative. The Hegelian determination of the speculative will be significant for us, when we will be concerned at an important part of the seminar with the apparent opposition of beginning with KEQauv6~ or with 'tO llTJ bflv6v nou n~ 6.v 'tL~ MOOL. Now I still have a question for you, Mr. Fink, which concerns Fr. 30. Do I understand you correctly when you comprehend x6oJW~ as identical with 'tel nc1vta in your interpretation? FINK: x60J,&O~ and 'tel naV'ta are not identical, but x60JW~ does indeed mean the jointed whole of 'tel naV'ta, the whole stamping, which is not fixed but moved. Heraclitus speaks of manifold ways of movement, as in strife or war. HEIDEGGER: Does x6oJW~ then belong in the sequence of lightning, sun, and fire? FINK: Not without further consideration. That could only be said if xOOJW~ were thought not as the order brought forth by fire, but as the ordering fire. If x6oJW~ had the function of bLax6oj.1TJOL~. then it would also belong in the sequence of basic words. HEIDEGGER: In Fr. 30, KOOJWV 'tOVbE is mentioned. If we hold that together with xa'tel 'tOV A6yov 'tOVbE, then couldn't x6oJWV 'tOVbE, corresponding with A6yov 'tOVbE, mean the same as this KO<J!.U.>~. which is still to he treated, which is still to be thematized? FINK: Above all, the demonstrative YOVbE does not mean an individual this, not this x6otwc;. which is now as opposed to other x6oj.lOL. When it is said that the xooj.loc; is brought forth as the jointed order, a x6oj.loc; in the singular, which belongs to a plurality of xooj.lOL, is not meant thereby. Of this xooj.loc; it is said: y(w m)yov futav'twv [the same f(u· all heingsj. Whether this is He1·aditus" phrase, we leave aside now. Diets translates futaV'twv as ··all living beings."" I rt:jel"l this translation. I

79 also reject the interpretation that thinks this phrase together with Fr. 89, in which it says that those who are awake have one common world, while those who sleep turn each one to his own world. I do not understand 'tOV au'tOv WtcivtOJV as the same, that is, the one and common world of those who are awake (xmvo~ x6o!J.O~) in opposition to the private world (lbw~ x601J.0~) of those who sleep. I interpret Mav'ta in the sense of 'ta ncivta. Although &naV't£~ customarily refers to humans and living beings, iotcivtOJV, just as much as ncivtOJV, here means only that Heraclitus speaks by reason of the flow of language, instead of from ncivtOJV WtcivtOJV. HEIDEGGER: But what then does naV'ta mean? FINK: ncivta form a joining and come forth in the shining up of fire in their determination and character. HEIDEGGER: Can't one also start from a plural, where x6oj.I.OL are the many states of an entire order of ncivta? x60!J.OV 't6vb£ would then be this one state in distinction to others. FINK: But there is no passage in Heraclitus in which he speaks of many x60!J.OL. HEIDEGGER: However, the 't6vb£ marks a place at which a new theme begins. On your interpretation, x601J.0~ is to be understood ontologically as much as ontically. FINK: Heraclitus stands neither on the side of nc1vta nor on the side of fire; rather, he takes up a curious position between them. HEIDEGGER: With that we can now return to Fr. 31. FINK: I attempt first to expose a thought that contains a proposal f(>r an interpretation of Fr. 31. In the last seminar we expressed our doubt as to whether transformations or overturnings are meant with 'tQonaL If it is a question of transformations, then we think of the aUo(ooOL~. of a basic substance. If we translate 'tQOna( with overturnings, then-we could ask-do we mean the turning points in the way of the sun-fire in the firmament which measure time? Ht:IDEGGER: Is nuQ(>~ 'tQ01tai a gmitivtL~ .wbit'ClUJ or a grnitivus obierlll.\ [subjective genitive or objective genitive]? FINK: The 'tQ03ta( are asserted of fire. However, a difficulty lies in the f;tct that We have from the history of metaphysics familiar and common ideas and developed and general ways of thought in which we are always already moving. and from which we are also apt at first to interpret Fr. 31. One such idea, already given to us from metaphysics, is the idea of an underlying suhstam·e that shows itself in many disguises. Ht:mt:e;GER: l'tUQ
80 which emenates out of it? Two common schemes with which we could attempt to interpret nuQ6~ 'tQ01ta£ are the aUo£oxn~ of an underlying substance and the emenation of an original element. But I believe that we must entertain an extreme distrust of such conceptions. In the text it says: overturnings of fire, first into sea. The fire turns itself over into sea, that is, into that which we understand as a power opposed to fire. At first, we could suppose that it is a question of the sharp, ontic opposition of fire and water that is familiar to us. In the small domain of the human environment, there is the phenomenon that water quenches fire and that fire can vaporize water. But such reciprocal contest and annihilation is only possible on the soil of earth. Clearly, the fragment does not refer to this small domain, but rather to the great domain of the world. Here we have a view of fire in the heavens, the sea, and the earth-the sea that girds the earth. In the great domain of the world, the domain that presents itself to us in the view of the world, fire and water do not annihilate each other. The view of the world [Welt-Amchauung] is not understood here ideologically; rather, it means the immediate view of the great relationships of the heavenly stars, the sea that lies under them and the earth. When Heraclitus says that fire first turns itself over into sea, we suspend the schemata of aUo£oxn~ and emanation, even though we are still not able to think what "turning over" means. The sea turns itself half into earth, half into breath of fire. Then we read that the earth is passed into sea and that earth dissolves in the measure in which sea was before, when sea became earth. Nothing more is said in the fragment concerning whether and how the breath of fire turns further. With the breath of fire, the overturning is brought to a close. All that is spoken of is the turning of fire into sea and the sea's turning half into earth and half into breath of fire, and finally of earth turning into sea. Fire turns itself over into sea, this splits into earth and breath of fire, and half of the earth turns back into sea. Apparently a reciprocal exchange of water and earth, of fluidity and solidity, is mentioned. What is for us a familiar distinction of opposites dissolves itself. No further turning and no returning to fire is declared concerning the breath of fire. The differences of sea, earth, and breath of fire are referred back to a common origin, to a genesis which is posited step by step; but we still do not know the character of the genesis. If now we cannot apply the familiar scheme of cill.o£oom~. that is, the scheme of the original substance with its states and modes and the scheme of emanation, then we get into a difficulty. How then should we interpret the nuQ{l~ 'tQ01tat? We must ask what Heraditus has thoughtfully experienced and l·aught sight of. I auempt now-if you will-to give a fantastic meaning to nuQC)~ 'tQ01ta£, which is thought as a possible answer to the question of what Heraclitus has thoughtfully l·aught sight of. We could make the turning of fire in-

81

1clligible to ourselves by starting out from the phenomenon of the break of day, from the phenomenon of dawn on the Ionian coast. At dawn, the expanse of the sea flashes up out of the fire which breaks out from night and drives out night; and opposite the sea there flashes up the shore and land, and above the sea and land the zone of the vault of heaven which is tilled by the breath of fire. A deeper sense would lie in what is familiar to us as the break of day, if we do not now think the relationship of fire to sea, earth, and breath of fire, namely the bringing-forth-to-appearance 1hat is the basic event of fire, simply as the casting of light to and lettingbe-seen of that which is already determined thus and so. A deeper sense would lie in that which is familiar to us as the break of day, if we also do not understand bringing-forth in the sense of a building manufacture or of a creative bringing-forth, but attempt to advance thoughtfully behind the two expressive forms, coming-forth-to-appearance in the sense of technical and creative achievement and casting of light. In order to win a deeper sense of the break of day, it would depend on avoiding the scheme of technical bringing-forth in the sense of a material transformation and also the scheme of creative bringing-forth; and beside that, it would depend on taking away from the letting-shine-up in the light of fire the basic trait of impotence. If we could succeed in thinking back behind the familiar schemata of making, bringing-forth, and casting light or letting-be-seen, then we could understand the break of day in a deeper sense. We could then say that in the breaking of the world-day the basic distinctions of the world area, sea, earth, and vault of heaven, first come forth to appearance. For this deeper thought we have an immediate phenomenon in the break of day. But nowhere do we have a phenomenon corresponding to the return course of earth into sea. HEJDE<;GER: How would you translate "tQOXa( in your projection, which you yourself call fantastic, but which is not at all so fantastic because it includes reference to immediate phenomena. FINK: We see the arising of fire, and in its arising the "tQ<ma( are the lurnings of fire around toward that which shows itself in the fire shine. tQ<ma£ signify no material transformations ... HEJDEGGER: ... and also no mere illumination. FINK: In announcement of the deeper sense of mlQOc; "tQOXa(, I was nmcentrating on a commonness, not known in ontic relationships, of bringing-forth into visibility and letting-arise in the sense of qromc;. That is an attempt to avoid the scheme in which fire converts like an original clement over into other elements like water and earth. And I attempt to lhink this in a simile between the arising of the articulated world in the light-shine of the world illuminating fire, and the regions of m1vra laying themselves out. Ht:JDEGGt:R: You thus take the phenomenon of dawn as the basis of your interpretation ...

82

FINK: ... in order to avoid the phenomenon of transformation. HEJDEGGER: You mean thereby the dawn of the world and not of a specific day, just as you have in view the world-fire and not the sun. FINK: But in the phenomenal sun, we can think fire. HEJDEGGER: How should we think fire? In order to heighten the difficulty, I refer to Fr. 54, in which the word acpavfJc; [invisible] comes to the fore. The fire is invisible; it is the fire which does not appear. FINK: As we have said at the outset: the fire is that which is not there in 'ta 3tclVta. HEJDEGGER: If you proceed from day to world-day, so we could think from the sun thither to fire. FINK: Nowhere do we find the sudden change of fire into sea as an ontic phenomenon. PARTICIPANT: To what is 8aMioOTJc; referred? FINK: To 'tQ03ta£. For the turning over of sea into earth and breath of fire is a continuation of 'tQ03tal. HEJDEGGER: I propose that we bracket Fr. 31. The difficulty we got into lies in this, that we have not spoken clearly enough about 1t'UQ, which we still have to do. I understand neither the interpretation which is accompanied by chemical ideas nor can I follow through the attempted correspondence of day and world-day. For me, there is a hole here. FINK: The difficulty will perhaps clear itself up if we come to Fr. 76, in which fire, sea, and earth appear in repeated sequence. The most important thing there is the manner in which 'tQ03ta£ are characterized. What is named only as turning over in Fr. 31, is here SJX>ken of as "to live the death ofthe other." With that, we meet a new, surprising thought. At first, it should sound noteworthy to us that the dark f(>rmula of death, which first becomes clear to us in the domain of the living, is referred to such entities as neither live or die, like water or earth. In the small domain of human ambit, we know well tht• phenomenon that fire vaporizes warer and water quend1es fit·e. Here we can say thai fire lives the destruction of water and water lives the destruction of fire. HEJJ>Haa:R: To live would mean here "to survive" ... FINK: ... to survive the passing of the other, to survive in the annihilation of the other. Rut we have here only a JX>etic metaphor. In order to understand the 'tQ03tl)-dlaracter, we must get away from the idea of a t·hemical change. Starting from the life-death fragments, we must represcnl to ourselves what Heraclitus thinks by life and death. From there we Gill also understand rhe avraJ.lULI~l). that is, the cxd1ange of :n:avn1 for fire and of lire for :n:avta. This is a rdationship like that of ).{old and ).{oods, in which nmnenion it is more a matter of li).{ht than the valut· of gold. We do nol understand the turning over of fin· into what is not fire in the sense of a chemical d1angc or in the sense of an original suhst
83

that masks itself through its emanations. Rather, we will view the entire range that binds fire, sea, earth, and breath of fire in connection with life and death. Apparently, we revert to anthropological fragments in opposition to cosmological fragments. In truth, however, it is not a question of a restriction to human phenomena; rather, what pertains to being human, such as life and death, becomes in a distinctive sense the clue for understanding of the entirety of the opposing relatedness of b and

navta.

8 Intertwining of Life and Death (Correlated Fragments: 76, 36, 77). -Relation of Humans and Gods (Correlated Fragments: 62, 67, 88).

FINK: Fragment 31 remained closed to us for many reasons: first, because the plural 'tQ<JL!!;) or emanation of an original element that conceals itself in its manifold appearances as alien forms. I am of the opinion that we must mobilize a mistrust of all the usual schemes of thought that are familiar to us from the conceptual tradition of metaphysical thinking. Here, these are above all the two schemes of cillo(wOL!!; and emanation. The attempt to clarify Fr. 31 from the phenomenon of dawn on the Ionian coast falls short, in the characterization of the letting-arise and shining-up of the world regions of sea, earth, heaven, and breath of fire, of the task of thinking this neither as a real transformation of an original substance, nor as the emanation of an original element, nor as bringing-forth in the technical or creative sense, nor as the impotent illumination of already-existing entities by the lightshine of fire. Perhaps it is necessary to go back behind the distinction of actual manufacture and creative bringing-forth and of bare casting of light and illumination, if we wish to think the shining-up of entities in an all encompassing shine of lightning, of the sun, or of eternal living fire. HEIDEGGER: You say that the coming-forth-to-appearance of what is is no actual making, no creative bringing-forth and also no bare illumination. In this connection, you have some time ago referred to the fact that a similar predicament is hidden in Husserl's concept of constitution. FINK: The problem of constitution in Husserl's phenomenology has its place in the subject/object-reference. The perception [Geurahrm] of the unity of an object in the multiplicity of ways of being given is constituted in the interplay of aspects of the object. With the concept of constitution Husserl attempts, to begin with, to avoid a complete realism and idealism. Complete realism holds that perception is only a comprehension according to consciousness of what is independent of consciousness. ;\~ against this, complete idealism holds that the subject makes things.

85 The predicament of finding a concept that does not refer to building, creation or bare representation always presents itself with Husser!. In distinction to ancient philosophy, modern philosophy does not think appearance so much from the issue of what is in the openness of a general presencing, but rather as becoming an object and presenting itself for a subject. In the general concept of appearance, nevertheless, selfpresentation belongs to each entity. But each entity presents itself to everything that is, and, among others, to the entity that is characterized by cognition. Presentation, then, is a collision among what is, or a representation of what is by the one who represents. But what is cannot be understood with the categories of attraction and repulsion. HEIDEGGER: Another manner of explaining representation occurs in reference to receptivity and spontaniety. FINK: Kant speaks of receptivity in reference to sensory data, and in a certain manner also in reference to the pure forms of intuition, space and time. Spontaniety is based on the categorical synthesis of transcendental apperception. HEIDEGGER: Which moment do you see now in Husserl's doctrine of constitution? FINK: In his concept of constitution, Husser! means neither making nor bare perception of things which are independent of consciousness. Nevertheless, the positive characterization of the concept of constituion remains difficult. When Husser) strove to think back behind the distinction of making and bare perception, this problem remained in the path of cognition, that is, in the relationship of the subject to an entity that is already posited from the beginning. The prior question, however, is whether ... HEIDEGGER: ... objectivity necessarily belongs ... FINK: ... to the being of what is, or whether objectivity first becomes a universal approach to what is in modem philosophy, with which another, more original approach is covered up. HEIDEGGER: From this it follows once again that we may not interpret Heraclitus from a later time. FINK: All the concepts that arise in the dispute over idealism and realism are insufficient to characterize the shining-forth, the comingforth-to-appearance, of what is. It seems to me more propitious to speak of shining-forth than of shining-up. For we are easily led by the idea of shining-up into thinking as if what is already were, and were subsequently illuminated. ciA.iJ8ELa would then be only an elicitation of what already is in a light. However, the light, as ciA.iJ8na and fire, is productive in a sense still unknown to us. We know only this much, that the "produ(:itivity" of fire is neither a making nor a generative bringing-forth nor an impotent casting of light.

86

HEIDEGGER: One could then say that coming-forth-to-appearance is neither creatio [creation] nor illuminatio [illumination] nor constitution .. . FINK: ... nor "tEXV'l as bringing forth. For "tEXVT] is the bringingforth of a specific form out of the substratum of an available, though not manufactured, material ... HEIDEGGER: ... in distinction to creatio ... FINK: ... which brings-forth living creatures. We must thus bracket out an entire catalog of current ways of thinking in order not to think coming-forth-to-appearance in an inappropriate manner. But such a procedure has only the character of a via negationi~ [way of negation], and does not lead a step nearer to an understanding of what the shining-forth of "ta 1t6.vta or Ov-ta in the £v of fire, sun or A.oy6~ means. HEIDEGGER: Coming-forth-to-appearance concerns a general reference ... FINK: ... the puzzling reference of lv and 1t6.vta. This reference is puzzling because the fv never occurs among "ta 3tclvta. "tel 1tavta means all of what is. But what kind of allness is that? We know relative, specific allness like that of genus and species. For example, we think an allness of species in the concept "all living things." "tel 1tclvta, however, form no relative allness, but rather the allness of everything which is. Yet fv does not fall under the allness of "ta 1tclvta. Rather, the other way around, "tel 3tclvta are housed in fv, but not-as you have once said in a lecture-like potatoes in a sack, but rather in the sense of what is in being. HEIDEGGER: We must ask still more closely about "tel 3tclvta and 6vta. How should we interpret 6vta? What are "ta 1tc1vta? FINK: For one thing, we could make the attempt to enumerate whatever there is. What is, for instance, is not just nature and her things. We could begin an enumeration with the elements: sea, earth, heaven. HEIDEGGER: The gods belong to what is. FINK: But with that, you already refer to what is and is unphenomenal. At first, let us stay with what is phenomenal. After the elements, we could name the things made up out of them. But there are not only things of nature. Rather, there are also artificial things that we do not come across in nature and for which there is no pattern in nature. A human shares in bringing-forth. A human begets a human, says Aristotle. That means that he has a part in the creative power of nature. Beside that, a human brings forth artificial objects. It is an open problem whether the Aristotelian analysis of the things manufactured in "tEXVT]. with the help of the scheme of the four causes, is a sufficient determination of the artifact. It is questionable whether artificial things have a random c·haracter or whether they have a charac:tcr of necessity. Sorne time ago. you asked whether there arc shoes because there arc shoemak-

87 ers or whether there are shoemakers because there are shoes. To human Dasein belong such things as are bound up with Dasein's manner of being, and those are necessary things. Alongside these, there are also luxury items. Also the political ordet·s, like states, cities, settlements, laws, belong to what is, but also idols and ideals. This rough overview refers to a great many entities. We do not, however, know straight away how all that we have mentioned coincides in its common feature of being which, nevertheless, makes it different. But an ever more complete overview of all that is would never lead to uncovering £v with or alongside ta :n:avra. Rather, understanding £v in its unique character in distinction to tel 3tclvta depends on a tQO:n:i) of our spirit. HEIDEGGER: When we speak of tel 3tClvtQ, do we suppose tel ovta from the start, or is there a distinction between the two? FINK: We think the being of what is in an inexplicit manner when we talk about tel 3tclvta. If the being of what is is referred to explicitly, if tel :n:avta are designated as 6vta, then it can mean that they stand in the horizon of questionability, whether they are actual or supposed entities. Images, for example, which are perceived by dxao£a [apprehension of or by phantasms], are also entities, but they are not that which they represent. Among things, there are grades of being of what is. There are possibilities of the appearance of things which exhibit themselves as other than what they are, without this appearance having to be seen as subjective deception. Reflection on water, for example, is such a phenomenon of appearance. But it is not easy to describe the manner of being of the reflection on water. If ta :n:avra are designated as 6vta, that can mean, on the one hand, that they have proved their quality of actual being, and on the other hand it can mean that the being of what is should be expressly named. HEIDEGGER: It seems to me that still another question conceals itself behind this one. Are :n:avta tel :n:avra in so far as they are 6vta, or are 6vta 6vta in so far as they are tel :n:avta? FINK: A decisive question is now raised, in which two ways of philosophical thinking are indicated. When we think 6vta from out oftel :n:avta, we move into an explicit relation to the world, but without already thinking of the world. But if we understand tel :n:avra from out of ilvta, we move in an understanding of being and think toward its wholeness. Two possible points of departure for thinking have revealed themselves to us. HEIDEGGER: You touched on the problem of the reflection in water and the appearance connected with it. Another problem about which I am still not dear is the perception of the sunset and the Copernican revolution. The question is whether the sunset is a necessary representation, or whether a seeing is possible for which the sun does not set.

88 FINK: Perception of the sunset is the right of the na"ively encountered world as against the scientific interpretation ofthe world. Through cultivation and indirect knowledge, a human can come to the point where he no longer sees what lies before his eyes, to the point, for instance, where he no longer sees the sunset as that which displays itself immediately to his view, but displays itself only in the manner seen in scientific explanation. HEJDEGGER: The truth of the immediate experience of the world disappears by reason of the scientific interpretation of the world. FINK: In earlier times, two hundred years ago for instance, life was still centered in the nearby region. Information about life at that time came out of the neighboring world. That has fundamentally changed today in the age of world wide transmission of news. Hans Freyer, in his book Theone des gegenwiirtigen Zeilalurs, describes the technical world as an environment of surrogates. 2 ~ For him, scientific knowledge of the environment is a surrogate. I regard this description as an inappropriate view, because in the meantime technological things have become a new source of human experience. Today a human exists in the omnipresence of complete global information. The world is no longer divided into neighboring zones, distant and more distant zones; rather, the world that was once thus divided today becomes covered over by technology that, through its skilled intelligence service, makes it possible to live in the omnipresence of all information. HEJDEGGER: It is difficult to comprehend how the world, divided into near and distant zones, gets covered over by the technological environment. For me, there is a breach here. FINK: To a certain extent, modern man lives schizophrenically. HEJDEGGER: If we only knew what this schizophrenia meant. But what we have said up to now is sufficient to see that we are not talking alxmt out of the way matters. The problem for us is the reference of fv and n:avta. From where do we experience this reference, from n:c1vta or from fv or from the to and fro in the Hegelian sense? How would you answer this problem with reference to Heraclitus? FINK: The beginning of our interpretation of Heraclitus by way of lightning was supposed to indicate that there is the basic experience of the outbreak of the whole. In the everyday manner of life, this experience is hidden. In everyday life we are not interested in such experience. In everyday living we do not expressly comport ourselves toward the whole, and also not when we knowingly penetrate into the distant Milky Way. But a human has the possibility of letting become explicit that irnplidt relationship to the whole as which relationship he always already exists. He exists essentially as a relationship to being, to the whole. For the most part, howevt>r, this relationship stagnates. In dealing with the thinker Heraditus, one can perhaps come to such ai1 experienc:e in

89 which the whole, to which we always already implicitly comport ourselves, suddenly flashes up. HEIDEGGER: Thereby we turn our questioning to the reference of €v and its many forms, and to its inner reference to "ta xc1vta. It is always a difficulty for me that too little is said about "tel xc1vta in the text of Heraclitus. We are forced to supplement what we do not learn about "ta xaV"ta from Heraclitus with what we know about the Greek world, and perhaps we let "tel xaV"ta be expressed by the poets. FINK: I said that we still do not have the possibility of declaring what the coming-forth-to-appearance of "tel xclV"ta is in the always living fire. In order to investigate this problem further, we cite Fr. 76, which appears to be one of the least certain fragments. There are more versions of it in which a turning ("tQOm'J) is thought. The Greek text handed down by Maximus Tyrius runs: l;"ij XUQ "tOV yf)~ Oava"tov xallri)Q l;"ij "tOv lt'UQO~ Oava"tOV, uo~ l;"ij "tOV UiQO~ Oava"tOV, yf) "tOv Ubmo~. Diets translates: "Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and the earth that of water (?)." What is surprising in the fragment is that the turning of earth into fire is mentioned in the formula: to live the death of something else. What is disconcerting is not so much the talk of arising and birth, but rather the pronouncement that fire lives the death of earth, air lives the death of fire, water lives the death of air, and earth lives the death of water. The most important thing seems to me to be that the annihilation of what precedes is the birth and arising of what follows. What follows comes forth in that it lives the death of what precedes. The fall of what precedes appears to be the way on which the new and other comes forth. It is not, thereby, a question of a superiority of annihilation over what is arising. That is of significance, because later when we consider in greater detail the formula, "to live the death of something other," we will not be able to say that it is a matter of a circular argument. For life turns into death, but death does not turn into life. In Fr. 76, it says that the death of what precedes is the life of what follows. An amendment that Tocco (Studi /tal. IV 5) has made in the text, which is handed down by Maximus and which makes the relationship ambiguous, runs: Fire lives the death of air and air lives the death of lire. Water lives the death of earth, earth lives the death of water. Here the connections of fire and air and water and earth are posited as mutual relations. In the comments of Diels-Kranz we read that cii)Q [air] is presumably smuggled in by the stoics. The following is given as a further variant from this: Fire leaves the death of water, water lives the death of lire or the death of earth, earth lives the death of water. We have no familiar phenomena of a change over of clements. When sea and earth arc talked alxnll, it is a matter of clements on a large scale, a matter of the world regions. If water is mentioned, however, it is not dear whether

90

the sea is also meant. In Fr. 76, a revolution of fire, air, water, and earth is perhaps mentioned. The overturnings mentioned here cannot quite be followed through by us. In this connection, we look at Fr. 36: 'VUX"(IOLV 8ava-coc; ubwQ y£V£o6at, uOa'tL OE 8ava-coc; yfjv yevto6aL, EX yfjc; OE UOWQ y(vE'tQL, E!; Ubmoc; b£ 'VUxTJ. Diels translates: "It is death for souls to become water, but for water, death to become earth. But out of earth comes water, and out of water comes soul." The turnover is here named with the hard and obscure word, ytvemc; [to become]. The issuance and the hard change of soul over into water, of water into earth, of earth into water, of water into soul, do not allow the idea that the same original substance lies behind its transubstantiations. The fragment mentions y£V£o6m and y(vE'taL and the hard word EX [out of]. We must ask ourselves whether ex in the sense of the issuance of something is also to be understood in the sense of the whence or else in the sense of the Aristotelian E!; ou [out of itself], as that which lies at the base and would change over in a J.I.E'tafk>A.fJ [change]. At first, it is striking that in Fr. 36 the four elements are not clarified more. Rather, 'VuxaC [souls] are mentioned. What could 'VuxaC be? What is thought by 'VuxaC? Do we abandon the apparent way of alternating change over of elements when the rubric 'VUxaC now emerges in issuance and passage? I am of the opinion that the soul in the sense of the human soul is not primarily meant by 'Vuxa£. An element of endowment with consciousness does not enter into the activity of the elements with 'Vuxa£. Perhaps we can ascertain this in a reference to Fr. 77: 'VUxfJOL 'tEQ'VLV fJ 8ava-cov iryQ'iloL yevto6m. The second part runs: t;f)v iuuic; 'tOv txdvwv 8ava-cov xat l;iJv Exdvac; -cov Tj~EQOV 8ava-cov. Diels' translation is: "For souls it is desire or (?) death to become wet. We live the death of those souls and they live our death." When it says that we live the death of the souls and that the souls live our death, when, in other words, the souls stand in relationship to us so that they live our death and vice versa, then they cannot easily be identified as humans. But we also have no motive for determining 'Vuxa£. We could at first only say that a new thought motif in the turning of fire appears with 'Vuxat HEIDEGGER: The difficulty here is that one does not know where the matter under consideration belongs, and where it has its place in Heraclitus' thought. FINK: I have taken up this fragment because the formula, "to live the death of something," also occurs in it, even though we still do not know who or what lives death as lVUXa£. This strange, most surprising formula must be thought explicitly by us, if we wish to keep away from pure ideas of <:hemkal transmutation, the clllo£wmc; and the emanation of tht> turns of fire. We turn to a first wnsideration of Fr. 62: a8ava-cot 8vrl-co£, 8vrl-cot

91

O.Oavatm, l;ilivtE~ tbv tx.dv(l)'Y Oavatov, tbv b£ txdv(l)'Y f3lov tEOvEtE~. Diets translates: "Immortal: mortal, mortal: immortal, for the life of these is the death of those, and the life of those is the death of these." Heraclitus speaks here in a short, tightly worded way. Here we have the formula, "to live the death of something other," in a special way. DielsKranz separate the "immortal mortal" and "mortal immortal," each time with a colon. One could suppose that in one instance it is a matter of a determination of Ovr]to( [mortals] and in the other a determination of O.OavatOL [immortals]. In the first case O.OavatOL would lJ:e the subject and Ovr]to( the predicate; in the second case Ovr]to( would be the subject and O.OavatOL the predicate. Does it mean that there are immortal mortals and mortal immortals? Doesn't the phrase contradict itself? Or is a relationship of the immortals to the mortals thought here, a relationship which is fixed by their being placed together? HEIDEGGER: It is noteworthy that Ovr]to( stands between the O.Oavatm. FINK: Do you take O.Oavatm as the subject of the sentence? One could ask what kind of a distinction is thought in O.OavatOL and Ovr]to(? A simple answer would be that O.Oavat(l;Etv [to be mortal] is the negation of Oavato~ [death]. HEIDEGGER: How is Oavato~ to be determined in reference to what we have said up to this point? FINK: We cannot give such a determination yet, because we have moved till now in the domain of ta ltclvta in reference to 1C'UQ O.dl;(J)()V. Perhaps one could view death from O.d!;(J)()V, if one thinks it as the always living, in contrast to the experience that every living thing is finite. But it is difficult to think the O.dl;(l)()v. HEJDEGGER: Don't we learn from Fr. 76 that Oavato~ is distinguished in contrast to y£vEm~? FINK: There it is said that through the death of one, another comes forth. HEJDEGGER: Does Oavato~ mean cpOoQa? FINK: I regard this identification as doubtful. Death and life are not normally referred to fire, air, water, and earth, in any case so long as one does not understand fire in the sense of Heraclitus. Looked at from the phenomenon, we speak of life and death only in the domain of living things. In reference to the domain of what is lifeless, we could speak only in a figurative sense of death and life. But let us remain at first with Fr. 62, in which O.OavatOL and OVTJtO£ are mentioned. We could say that the immortals are the gods, and that the mortals are humans. The gods arc not deathless in the sense of an u-prh•itum [alpha-privative]. They an~ not unrelated to the fate of death. Rather, they are in a certain way referred to the death of mortals through the reverse relation to death, from which they are free. As

92

coohservers, the gods have a realtion to death, which relation we can say though not comprehend. Their reverse relation to death has only the character of exclusion. As a-eavatOL, the gods have a relation to mortals, which relation appears in the form that the life of the immortals is the death of mortals. We are accustomed to understanding life and death in hard opposition, the hardness of which cannot be surpassed. The opposition of life and death is not the same as that of warm and cold, or of young and old. In the oppositions familiar to us, there are transitions, for example, the transition of being warm to being cold, and the transition of being young into being old. Still, taken strictly, there is no transition of being warm into being cold. Rather, that which at first has a share in being warm maintains a share in being cold. Also, being young does not turn, strictly speaking, into being old. Rather, that which at first is young turns into something old, becomes old. Such transitions are in part reversible, so that they can return their course, and in part one way and irreversible. What at first has a share in being warm and then turns cold can also turn again into being warm. However, what is first young and then old cannot become young again. l!!__Fr. ~7. which says that god is day-night, winter-summer, war-peace, satiety-hunger, Heraclitus names different oppositions that are familiar to us; however, they all have a character fundamentally other than the opposition of life and death. Is the juxtaposition of life and death in any way still measurable and comparable to the juxtapositions familiar to us? In the phenomenon, the fall of living things into death is irrevocable and final. True, it is hoped in myth and religion that a new life awaits us after death, and that death is only an entrance door. This postmortal life is not the same life as the premortal life here on earth. But it is questionable whether talk of "afterwards" and "previously" continues to have any sense here at all. Evidently, there is expressed in this only a perspective of those who are living and who fill the no-man's-land with ideas of a life to be hoped for. With familiar oppositions, which we know and which have transitions, we find a going under of one into another and, roughly, the birth of the warm out of the cold and of the cold out of the warm. But do we also lind in the phenomenon a birth of life out of death? Clearly not. The birth of what lives is an issue out of the union of the two sexes. The new life is lxu·n out of a special intensity of being alive. Thereby, we do not need to share the same view with Aristotle, that the new life is already preformed as a seed in the parents, and that birth is then only the ciJJ..o(wau; of a still germinal kind of being into a developed kind of being. But could we imagine how life and death are intertwined, and indeed not in the sense that life turns into death, hut in the sense that the transition is thought as ''to live the death of something other"~ That does not mean: to nnne out of death into life. Let us begin with the form of

93

speech. We are accustomed to saying that life lives, that death dies. That is not meant in the sense of a redundant manner of expression. For we could say that the individual dies his or rather another's death, or rather that the individual lives his life in his separation against the alienation that each one experiences from the practices and institutions and the social situation. In such formulations the reference of an intransitive verb to an inner accusative is at once familiar to us. HEIDEGGER: In order to clarify the inner accusative that you name, we could think about Hegel's speculative sentence. Hegel gives the example: "God is being." At first, it appears to be a normal declarative sentence in which God is the subject and "being" is the predicate. If this sentence is comprehended as a speculative sentence, however, then the distinction of subject and predicate is cancelled in that the subject turns into the predicate. God disappears in being; being is what God is. In the speculative sentence, "God is being," the "is" has a transitive character: ipsum esse est deus [being itself is God]. This relationship of the speculative sentence is nevertheless only a remote, risky analogy to the problem that now occupies us. FINK: But "God is being," thought speculatively, is a certain analogy only to the formula, "to live life," but not to the other formula, "to live the death of something other." Here "to live" is not referred to life, but to something that appears to be the contrary. HEIDEGGER: But the question is what "death" means here. We do not know which opposition is thought between life and death. FINK: That depends on the conception of whether death is the process of dying, of becoming dead, or completed death. This distinction makes the problem still more difficult. HEIDEGGER: What is astonishing is that the matter that is so estranging to us appears to be so glibly said by Heraclitus. FINK: What Heraclitus says here about life and death is in general most estranging. If we represent the state of affairs symmetrically, then we could not only say that the immortals live the death of the mortals, hut we could also ask whether there is a transitive dying of something. The entanglement of life and death has its place only on the constant l(mndation of life. That precludes a verbal dying. HEIDEGGF.R: If u6vE
94 death. Is being dead a manner of being? An act is mentioned in ~wvn:~: living the death of those. That corresponds to the formula of Fr. 76: Fire lives the death of earth. HEIDEGGER: In order to clarify u6vE
95 are the same; young and old are the same. Heraclitus declares the sameness of what seems to be different. How is 'taim) [the same] to be understood here? HEIDEGGER: We could understand it as "belonging together." FINK: Indeed, each pair, living and dying, waking and sleeping, young and old, belongs together. But how do living and dying, for example, belong together in a "same"? HEIDEGGER: In reference to what is same. FINK: If being alive and being dead are the same, then they form a sameness that hides itself. The distinctness of life and death becomes clear for the most part when they are posited as analogous to the former two relationships. Sleeping and waking, as well as being young and being old are familiar differences to us, which are referred to the course of time of our lives. Waking and sleeping are alternating states in the course of time, being young and being old are two distinctive phases in the course of time of our lives. Against that, life and death is a relationship of the entire lifetime to something that overshadows it but that does not occur in the lifetime. Is the saying of the thinker Heraclitus a slap in the face to the current opinion that insists on the distinctness of life and death as well as on the difference between waking and sleep, being young and being old? Is it a matter of directing the thrust of his thinking against the trend toward a world that is divided up in differences, and doing so with respect to a sameness? This would not mean that phenomena would loose their distinctions; rather, it would mean that they are 'tOU't6 in relation to fv. Heraclitus says that being alive-being dead, waking-sleeping, and being young-being old, are the same. He does not say, as Diels-Kranz translate and therewith interpret: "the same which dwells in us." flJ.lLV [us) is added to hL [within] by Diets. It is precisely questionable whether we are the place of the sameness of great oppositions of life and death or whether the place of sameness must not rather be sought in fv, to which humans comport themselves and which they thus resemble in a certain sense. Certainly it is at first a matter of a dictatorial assertion that the living and the dead, waking and sleeping, the young and the old, are the same. It is not said that the three opposing pairs of opposites are the same, hut rather Heraclitus names three oppositions that stand in a spedlied correspondence and he thinks the 'tOU't6 in relation to each one of the oppositions. The lifetime f()rms the common basis for the thn:efold opposites. Tht• entire lifetime is mnfined by death. Within life, sleep is the analog to death, being old has a specific reference to rlt·ath, and waking and being young are most related to being alive. But in Fr. 88, there is no mention of life and death, hut of what is alive and what is dead. But how arc the expressions "the living" and "the dead" to he understood? If we say the just ('to b£xawv) and the beautiful ('to

96 xa.Mv), then do we mean what is just or beingjust, what is beautiful or being beautiful? HEIDEGGER: Your interpretation thus goes in the direction not of understanding the three distinctions as three cases of a species, but rather in the direction of classifying the three distinctions in reference to the phenomenon of time ... FINK: ... and thus toward constructing an analogical relationship. Here it is not a question of fixed distinctions. Nevertheless, we are concerned with differences that form distinctions. Being alive and being dead do not stand in a gradual relationship to one another, because being dead does not allow of degrees. As against that, we are accustomed to intensifying being alive, and to distinguishing inert and high forms of life-performance. Waking and sleep, however, turn almost unnoticeably into one another. Life and death do not form an opposition like beautiful and ugly, nor is their distinction one of degree. The nature of their being different is the problem. As soon as we attempt to be clear about the all-too-familiar dialectical interpenetration the questionable character of the text disappears. If we start from the fact that each analogy is a likeness of what is unlike, then we could say that sleeping and waking, as well as being old and being young, relate in a certain sense to being dead and being alive. Perhaps it is a comparison all too full of hope, nevertheless, when we call sleep the brother of death and when we regard sleep as an in-between phenomenon. Also, regarding the question about the sense of the fomula, "to live the death of something," the tying together of life and death is the strange thing in the transitive use of"to live." It is a matter of interpretation whether the current model can also be applied; so that we not only say that death lives, but also that life dies. We came to no result, and perhaps we will come to no· final result at all. But the all too familiar explication of tQOml has wandered into the foreignness and darkness of the formula, "to live the death of something." We could perhaps think the relationship of fire to earth, to air, and to water rather in reference to life and death, so that, with reference to the difficult relationship of tension of life and death, we could come to a certain anthropological key for the nonanthropological foundational relatedness of fv and n:civta.

9 Immortal: Mortal (Fragment 62).EV 'tO ooqX>v (Correlated Fragments: 32, 90).

FINK: Mr. Heidegger cannot come today since he is prevented by an important trip. He asks us, however, to continue explication of the text, so that we make some further progress in our interpretation of the fragments. By means of the summary, he will inform himself about the progress of this session in order then to express an opinion. Let us bring to mind the way of thought, better, the gist of open questionabilities, that has led us in the last session. We started out from the problem of the transformations of fire with the question whether the change of an original stuff is thereby thought, or whether a relatedness of lv and 1tavta is aimed at. Finally, we arrived in Fr. 76 at the dark formula, difficult to comprehend, that something lives the death of another. This formula is then used in Fr. 62 as a mark of the relationship of immortals to mortals, or mortals to immortals. Is it only a matter here of another domain for the employment of the problematic formula, "to live the death of something"? Is the formula also meant here in the fundamental breadth, as we have learned it in Fr. 76 in the relationship of the elements, fire, air, water, and earth? Is it a matter of cosmological references, or of cosmological counterreferences in so far as the formula is here applied to things that stand open in a special manner to the whole, that is, to gods and humans? Is the above mentioned formula applied here to cosmological living beings? Perhaps that happens, because the relarionship of immortal to mortal is analogous to the reference of £v in the form of lightning, of sun, and of fire, to the 1tavta. Is the fundamental relatedness, ever disconcerting to us, of fv and 1tavta rather sayable from out of its reflection? Is the world-relatedness of fv and 1tavra rather ~ayable from out of the relationship of gods and humans who understand being? With this, the path of our problem situation is first of all indicated. Let us now attempt to clarify the structure of Fr. 62. For we cannot say that its structure has become clear and distinct at this point. The fragment runs: c'dUtvm:m Ovr]tol, 8VT)tot c'l86.vatm, twvrE~ tov ExELVWV 86.vatov, tOV o£ ~XELVWV fJ£ov tE8vEwtEc;. We could translate, "Immortal: mortal, mortal: immortal." Diels thereby brings immortals into a relationship to mortals and mortals into a reference to immortals. In addition, this relationship is explained by the dark problem-formula that Diels translates as follows: "for the life of these is the death of those, and the life of those is the death of these." This translation appears to me

98 to be too free. For it does say: ~WvtE~ tOV txdV(I)'V aavatov, tOV Of: txdv(I)'V Ji£ov tE8vEOOtE~, "in that they live the death of those and in that they die the life of those." If we interpret ciOavatOL in the familiar sense as gods and OvT}to£ as humans, then it is a matter of an interpretive step that we cannot assert with unconditioned certainty. To be sure, the immortals are the gods in Greek myth. But there are also intermediate beings, the heroes, who are born as mortal, half gods, and are elevated to become immortals. Is the milieu of immortals and mortals familiar with reliability and certainty? The problem is what is indicated by ciOavatOL and OvT}to£. But first we take up the mythological meaning, and comprehend the immortals as the gods and the mortals as humans. The gods are also characterized in Fr. 62 from out of death. True, immortals are indeed removed from death. They are not delivered over to death, but they stand open to it. As immortals they must know themselves as the ones who win their self-understanding in the negation of dying. They know themselves as the beings who are open to death, but who do not encounter death, the beings who observe the death of humans, and the beings who come to know their own permanence in the sight of the passing away of transient humans. The mortals are humans who know that they are delivered over to death in reference alone to the gods who always are and are removed from death. OvT}to£ is not some objective designation which is spoken from an extra-human point of view; it points, rather, to the self-understanding of humans in understanding that they are delivered over to death, in so far as they know themselves as morituri [those about to die]. Humans know themselves as transient in view of and in reference to the everlasting gods who are removed from death. With immortals and mortals the greatest innerworldly distance is named between innerworldly beings, the taut bow stretching between gods and humans who, however, ·are nevertheless referred to one another in their self-understanding and understanding of being. Mortals know their own disappearing being in view of and in reference to the everlasting being of the gods; and the gods win their perpetual being in contrast and in confrontation with humans who are constantly disappearing in time. The distinction of immortals and mortals is characterized from out of death. But this distinction is not one like the distinction between life and death itself. For, in their selfunderstanding, the immortals and the mortals live and comport themselves toward the being of the other. The relationship of the gods to humans is not to be equated with the relationship of the living to the dead, and yet the taut bow stretching between ciOavatm-Ovr]to£ and 6vT]to£-ci8avatoL is thought out of the reference to life and death. The most widely stretched out distinction between gods and humans, immortals and mortals, is intertwined and is tightened together with its

99 opposite extreme-perhaps in an analogy to the relatedness of £v and n:~a.

The question which leads us is whether, with the admission of the relationship of immortals to mortals, more than just an anthropological clue is found for indicating how the fire, the sun, the lightning, as special forms of fv, comport themselves toward n:avta. There is not fv and 'tel n:avta next to one another. They do not lie on the same plane, do not lie on a comparable plane of the usual sort, but they are unique in their relatedness. Their relatedness can be indicated with no known relationship. fv is not among n:avta; it is not already thought when we think 'tO n:avta strictly and include in this quintessence everything that is at all. When we ourselves think 'tel n:~a as quintessence, it is not inclusive of fv. It remains separated from 'tO n:~a. but not in the manner, familiar to us, of being separated by spatial and temporal boarders or by belonging to another kind of species. All usual kinds of separation are inapplicable to the fundamental relatedness of fv and n:~a. But at the same time we must also say that the unique belonging-together of fv and n:avta, the intertwining of what is separated, must also be seen in the unique separation of fv and Ta n:clvta. fv and Ta n:clvta are tightened together in their intertwining. Up to now we have met with a manifold of similies; for example, as in the night, things shine up in the light-shine of the lightning flash and show their relief, so in an original sense, the entirety of things comes forth to appearance in the outbreaking light-shine of fv, thought as lightning. Or again: as the things that stand in sunlight shine up in their imprint in the light of the sun, so the entirety of inner-worldly things comes forth to appearance in the fv thought as sunlight. Here, things do not come forth side by side with the sunlight, but the sunlight surrounds the things and is thus separated from them and at the same time bound with them in the manner of an including light. Just so, there is also an entirety of the many 'tel n:avta, not side by side with the light of shiningforth; rather, the light of shining-forth envelops the entirety of n:~a and is "separated" from it and "bound" with it in a manner difficult to comprehend, which we could probably best clarify for ourselves in comparison with the all-embracing light. Are immortals and mortals now also referred to each other like £v and Tel n:~a with their greatest separation? Thereby we understand the immortals as those who know their own perpetual heing only on the background of the temporal perishing of humans. And we understand the mortals as humans who only know their transient heing by having a relationship to the immortals who always arc and who know their perpetual being. We could read cd:lltvaTm 6vrj'to£, 6vT]TO( a8ava't0l in many ways; either with Diets or else in the f(JIIowing way: immortal mortals, mortal immortals. This hard phrase

J()()

appears to be self-contradictory. But one does not go especially far off base with a paradoxical concept of immortal mortals and mortal immortals. The gods live the death of mortal humans. Does that mean that the life of the gods is the slaying of humans? And on the other side, do humans die the life of the gods? Neither could we connect any correct sense with this rendition. I would, therefore, rather believe that the following suggests itself. The gods live in comparing themselves with mortal humans who experience death. They live the death of mortals in that, in their self-understanding and their understanding of being, they hold themselves over against the transience of humans and the all-too-finite manner in which humans understand what is. But it is more difficult if we ask ourselves how we should translate tOv b£ bcdv
101

humans to themselves and to everything around them. Thus we understand "to live the death of humans" and "to die the life of the gods" as a reciprocal, intertwining relationship of the self-understanding and understanding of being of gods and humans. The gods live the death of humans in the sense that they could only understand themselves as immortals in their perpetual being against the background of what is transient. They are only perpetual when, at the same time, they are referred to the sphere of change in time. According to Fr. 62, gods and humans behave precisely not as in Holderlin's poem, "Hyperion's Song of Fate." "You walk above in the light, I Weightless tread a soft floor, blessed genii! I Radiant the gods' mild breezes I Gently play on you I As the girl artist's fingers I On holy strings. - Fateless the Heavenly breathe I Like an unweaned infant asleep; I Chastely preserved I In modest bud I For ever their minds I Are in flower I And their blissful eyes I Eternally tranquil gaze, I Eternally clear. - But we are fated I to find no foothold, no rest, I And suffering mortals I Dwindle and fall I Headlong from one I Hour to the next, I Hurled like water I From ledge to ledge I Downward for years to the vague abyss." 28 Here the domain of the gods and the domain of humans are separated like two spheres that do not intertwine with each other, but lie opposite one another without mutual reference. High above in the light, the gods wander without destiny, their spirit eternally in bloom, while humans lead a restless life and fall into the cataract of time and disappear. The way in which Holderlin here views the eternal life of the gods indicates that the view of mortals does not necessarily belong to the self-understanding of the gods. But if gods and humans do not form two separated domains, but rather form two domains turned toward each other, then we could apply the intertwining relationship to the beginning of Fr. 62, which ties mortals and immortals together with each other in a hard manner. PARTICIPANT: The tying together of the gods' perpetual being and the being of humans wandering in time has its analogy in Goethe's thought of perdurance in oscillation [Da!U'r im Wechsf'l]. FINK: There is, however, a perdurance as constancy in time. Kant, for example, thought the continuation of the world stuff in roughly this manner. PARTICIPANT: Goethe's thought of perdurance in oscillation does not mean constancy in time, but goes in the direction of Heraclitus' thoughts. FINK: Still, we would first have to know to which passage of Goethe's you refer. For there is also perdurance that stands throughout oscillation like, for example, the world stuff of Kant, which does not itself pass away or come into being, but only appears as different. Thus, however, we think the relationship between substance and its attributes.

102

PARTICIPANT: For Goethe, perdurance constitutes itself first and foremost in oscillation. FINK: That is also true in regard to substantial perdurance. But Heraclitus means precisely not that something endures in temporal changing. For then we would have only the relationship of an original stuff to its forms of appearance. But that was precisely the question, whether the relationship of fire, sea, and earth is the relationship of a perduring original stuff (fire) in the oscillations of its conditions or appearances as alien forms, or whether it is a matter of quite another unique distinction. All inner-worldly entities have the structure of relatively perduring substances with changing conditions, or they belong to a unique substance as the continuous substrate that goes on and neither passes away nor comes into being. If we apply this scheme of thought for the turning over of fire, then fire behaves toward sea and earth no differently than an original stuff to its many forms of appearance. However, we have sought after another relationship of fire to sea and earth that pertains to the relatedness of fv and navta. The relationship of immortal gods and mortal humans takes on an analogous representation for this relatedness of fv and n6.vta. Thereby, we think gods and humans not only in reference to the opposition of power and fragility, but such that gods and humans, in order to know their own being, have to know one another. If his h 1:0 oocp6v [the one, which alone is wise], it can only know itself in its highest opposition to 'tel n6.vta and at the same time also as that which steers and guides 'tel navta. With this, we view a relatedness not of the kind in which a supertemporal sphere of entities realtes itself to a temporal sphere of things. It is not a matter of a two-world doctrine of Platonic kind, but rather of a theory of the world, of the unity of the hand of the individual things found in the passage of time. When Goethe speaks of perdurance in oscillation, he means, perhaps, the constancy of nature over against the appearances of nature. But he thereby finds himself in the neighborhood of the thought of an original stuff. PARTICIPANT: I cannot associate myself with this conception. I am of the opinion that Goethe's thought of perdurance in oscillation comes into the neighborhood of your interpretation of Heraclitus. FINK: In Fr. 30, EV is mentioned as 1tUQ cid~wov, which is an immortal fire. The immortal gods are the analogical keepers of the immortal fire. In Fr. 100 it says: WQa<; al:navta
103 identified with b and :rtcivta, but that they represent symbolically the relatedness of b and :rtcivta. Immortal and mortal are not themselves cosmic moments that are separated and at the same time embraced like £v and :rtcivta. Rather both are cosmological beings who understand the whole, the gods from above and humans from below. If we want to speak here of an analogy, we must be clear that it is always thoroughly a matter of similarity by means of unsimilarity, whereby the unsimilarity is always greater. Talk about humans as imago dei [image of God] does not mean that a human is a mirror image of the Godhead and similar to the Godhead like a mirror image to the original image. A human is an image of God through the infinity of distance. We have no language for the purpose of addressing the relatedness of lv tb 'ta :rtcivta. The lv lights up to us only in lightning, in sun, in the seasons, in fire. Fire, however, is not the phenomenal, but the unphenomenal fire, in the shine of which 1:a :rtcivta come forth to appearance. Because we have no language to characterize the fundamental relatedness of lv and :rtcivta, and because we wish to keep mJQO~ 'tQO:rta( away from the traditional blunt schemes of thought, according to which an always extant original stuff changes its conditions or disguises itself in its forms of appearance, we have started out from Fr. 76, in which the fundamental relatedness of lv and :rtcivta is addressed in the formula, "to live the death of another." From there, we turned to Fr. 62 in which the formula, "to live the death" and "to die the life" is said, not of fire, air, water, and earth, but of immortals and mortals. Application of that formula to gods and humans appears at first to stand closer to our human power of comprehension. The transition from Fr. 76 to Fr. 62 is no narrowing of a general cosmological reference to an anthroplogicaltheological relationship. The anthropological-theological relationship is no reference of two kinds of beings, but rather the relationship of how the two different kinds of beings understand themselves and that which is. The gods understand their own perpetual being in reference to the death of humans. If the gods did not have before them the fall of humans and :rtcivta into time, could they live their life, which is never broken off, in blissful self-indulgence, and could they become aware of their divinity? Could 0., which is represented by the immortals, be by itself without the view of :rtcivta; could :rtcivta, which are represented by mortals and their understanding of being, be without knowing of the endlessness of :rtUQ cidt;(J}()v? 1 would like to repeat again that the relationship of immortals to mortals is not to he equated with that of band :T[(lV'ta. I was only concerned to point out that one can find an index to the relatedness of £v and :rtcivta in the intertwining relationship of gods and humans in their self-knowledge and knowledge of the other. Thus, it is a matter neither of a parallel nor of an analogy in the usual sense. All the fragments of Heraclitus' theology speak of god only like one could

104 speak of fv. All distinctions fall away in the god. Thereby, not only a sublimity of the god vis-a-vis the other living beings is expressed, but that which Heraclitus says about the god must be thought from the peculiar analogous relationship of the god to fv to ooq>Ov. In Fr. 32, Heraclitus says the following: fv to ooq>Ov IJ.OUVov AiyEa6UL e>Ux £80.t:L xat te£>..n ZT)VO~ 6vo11a. "The one, which alone is wise, is not willing and yet willing to be called by the name Zeus." In a certain manner we could think lv in Zeus, if the surrounding fv of the whole is also represented by Zeus as the highest innerworldly being. It is important, therefore, that Heraclitus says oux £8£A£L [is not willing] first and then £8£>..EL [is willing]. Only after the negation can a certain analogical correspondence be said of tbe god and fv. PARTICIPANT: In order to carry out your interpretation of fv, one must understand ~v in a two-fold meaning. On one hand, fv is in opposition to tel 3tclvta, and on the other, fv is as the unity of opposites of fv and 3tclvta. One cannot posit the opposition between fv and 3tclvta without presupposing a bridging unity between them. Perhaps I can clarify myself by a reference to Schelling. Schelling says that the absolute is not only the unity, but the unity of unity and of opposition. Thereby it is meant that behind each opposition stands a bridging unity. If we wish to avoid a two-world doctrine, then fv stands not only in opposition to tel 3tclvta, but we must think fv at the same time as bridging unity. FINK: lv is the unity within which there first is the entirety of 3tClvta in their manifold oppositions. You argue formally with the scheme of concepts from German idealism, that the absolute is the identity of identity and nonidentity. This relationship can be developed in other fashions. Thereby, we do not, however, come into the dimension of Heraclitus. fv and 3tOvta form a unique distinction. It is better if we speak here of distinction and not of opposition. Otherwise, we think all too easily of the usual oppositions like warm-cold, male-female, and so on, and thus of reversible and irreversible oppositions. One could project here an entire logic of oppositions. Our question is directed toward fv. We came onto its trace in departure from lightning. In the view of natural science, lightning is nothing other than a specific electrical appearance. But Heraclitus thinks the nonphenomenal rising of the entirety of 3tclvta in it. Although we have uncovered more nuances of the EV-3tavta relatedness in going through various fragments, we still cannot comprehend this relatedness completely. After we have learned about the £v in the form of lightning, lightning bolt, sun, and seasons, we also met with the determination of £vas fire. Since we did not want to compn:h<.·nd 3tUQO~ tQ03tai in a blunt physiological sense, we had to search f(u· another comprehension. In h. 76, we learned f(u· the first time the formula, "to live the death of something." In Fr. 62, we found the formula again as the relationship of immortals to monals. We attempted with this formula of counter-

105

reference, i.e., "to live the death of the other" and "to die the life of another," to think toward the relationship of gods and humans. Gods do not live the death of humans in the sense that a slaying of humans belongs to their life. We interpret "to live the death of mortals" as a life of the gods in sight of the being of living beings who understand being in a finite, temporal manner. In sight of humans who are delivered over to death and who are not sheltered by perpetual being, the gods understand their cid Elvm (to be always] and are, as it were, the nup cidl;(l)()v, even if they are never cid in the strict sense like nup cidl;(I)()V is. Against this, humans die the life of the gods. In understanding of the perpetual being of the gods, they are not allowed thereby to partake of it. Humans win no share of the perpetual being of the immortals, but they understand themselves and their disappearance in reference to the fact that the gods are not delivered over to death. I attempt to give one sense to the fonnulas, "to live the death of mortals" and "to die the life of immortals," in which I interpret them as the intertwining of the selfunderstanding and understanding of being of gods and humans. This intertwining relationship represents the counter reference of lv, the always living fire, and the temporally finite being of nc1vta in general which are brought forth by the seasons. The immortal gods are the reflection, the innerworldly representations, of the always living fire as a f(n·m of fv. In this interpretation, I see a possibility of understanding how the gods live the death of humans. They live the death of humans not in the sense of an encounter; rather, tlley are referred to the death' of humans- in-the encounter of their own perpetual being. In the first and second versions of "Mnemosyne," Holderlin says: "For the heavenly ones are unable I To do everything. Namely~munals I Reac_h the abyss. Thus, the echo returns I With them. Long is I the time, hut I What is true happens." That means that the gods, those who do not stand in need, nevertheless r:teed one thing, namely mortals who pass further into the abyss. We have a simile of lv to the nc1vta, which are wnstantly driven about in time, in that we see how the gods cannot, in their perpetuity, self-sufficiently enjoy their infinity, and how they are in need of the counter reference to mortals. We have a simile of lv and navta in that we see how humans, driven about in time, are in need of the counter reference to perpetual gods for the sake of knowledge of their own finitude. Humans and gods have the commonality that they arc not only entities in the world, but that they live in the manner of understanding relationships to being. Humans understand being in a finite way. the gods in infinite manner. The gods exceed humans not only in force generally, hut in the power of their understanding of what is. The nciv is mortal immortal. The nciv is, however, no coincidmtut ojJpo.\ilornm, no night in which all oppositions are obliterated. 'tO nciv is the word in which fv and navta are comprehended together. We can apply paradoxical phrases to it alone.

106

We turn now to Fr. 90:

\

nu()O~ 'tE civta!JOLI3TJ 'tel navta xat 1tUQ futavtwv

~X(I)01tEQ XQUOOU xQiJ~a'ta xat XQTI~cl'tWV XQUOO~.

Diets translates: .. Alternating change: of everything for fire and fire for everything, like goods for gold and gold for goods." We appear to interrupt the line of interpretation with this fragment. Here the exchange relationship is thought, which we could more or less think and which does not seem to go along with the way that gods and humans alternately understand themselves and being. At first the fragment seems to offer no special difficulty. The fragment speaks of an alternate counterexchange, of a counterrelationship, where the one is replaced by the other and enters the place of the other. It appears that here the relationship of 1tUQ and nclvt:a is spoken of in comparison to an event in the market. We know a market of natural exchange, or else in the more developed form of the exchange of money, in which goods are exchanged for money and money for goods. The goods, as multitude and variety, behave toward the single form of gold like the multitude in general behaves to that which is simple, but that corresponds, nevertheless, to the multitude of goods. Is this relationship also a form of the fundamental relatedness of fv and nclvt:a? The fv, as the most simple and all embracing, stands in a relatedness of opposition to 'tel nti:na. In the fragment, we read: exchange of 'tel navta for fire and of fire for Wtavta. We also understand Wtavta here in the sense of nclvt:a as in Fr. 30, in which we have conceived Wtavta not as living beings, but as synonymous with nclvt:a. Heraclitus speaks of an alternating exchange of 'tel navta for fire and of fire for 'tel nclvt:a. What we could say about the relationship of goods and gold, nevertheless, does not hold in the same way regarding the exchange-relationship of 'tel nclvt:a and fire. In reference to 'tel nclvt:a and fire, we could not say that there, where the one is, the other will go. The vendor in the market gives up the goods and receives money for them. Where previously the goods were, money comes in and, the other way around, where the money was, goods come in. May we comprehend the relatedness of fv and navta so bluntly? Clearly not. The comparison becomes dearer, if we do not take gold only as a specific coinage, as a form of gold, but if we rather notice the glimmer of gold which is a symlx>l of the sunny. Then the sunny, illuminated gold behaves to the goods like lv to 'tO navta and, the other way around, 'tel nclvt:a behaves toward £v like the goods to the sunny, illuminated gold. The glimmer of gold suggests that it is not a question here of any simile you please, in which we could replace gold with money. In our simile it is less a matter of alternate exchange of real and token values; rather, it is a matter of the relationship of the glimmer of gold to goods. Tlw gold stands f(,r the glimmer of fire of nug ad~wov, the goods f(,r 'tel mivta. The 1tUQ afi~(OOV and 'tel navta in their relationship of ext·hange wuld nol intdligihly he din·crly t•xpressed. Likewise. the similt· of gold

107 and goods in their relationship of exchange will ultimately fail. Nevertheless, the relatedness of 1tUQ ciE£~wov (fv) and nc1vta receives a direction through the failure of that simile. If one thinks here of the EXJtUQ
10 The Standing Open of Gods and Humans (Fragment 62). The "Speculative" in HegeLHegel's Relationship to Heraclitus.Life - Death (Correlated Fragments: 88, 62).

HEIDEGGER: I was not present at the last seminar session. I am asked to express myself on the course of thought. That, however, is a different matter from immediate participation in the discussion. For there is the danger that I approach the matter from the outside. First, I would like to touch on the difficulty that was prevalent in the last session: the determination of the relationship of gods and humans in relation to the relatedness of lv and n:c1vta. It is thus a question of a relation between relationships. I intentionally speak formally now in order to let the structure be seen that lies at the basis of the thoughts of the last session. If we notice the approach and the course of the sessions till now, the difficulty appears to me to have been to find the transition from a relationship, still undetermined, of lightning, sun, seasons, and fire to 'tel n:c1vta, to the relationship of gods and humans in their relation to the relatedness of lv and n:c1vta. The difficulty can be seen in the way lv suddenly reveals another character. So far as I have understood the course that Mr. Fink has in view for the seminar, it is that of deliberately setting out from the fire-fragments and only then to bring into view aU that which one knows as logos-fragments and as specifically Heraclitean. In this, I see the difficulty that by the interpretation of the peculiar state of affairs, "to live death, to die life," which is said of gods and humans, a correspondence-and not an equation-becomes visable to the actual, thematic relatedness in question of b and n:avta. When we speak of the "relatedness of lv and n:avta," then it seems as if we were thinking about a connection between both which we have localized concretely and for which relatedness we then sought a bow which spanned them. In the end, however, the matter stands in such a way that lv is the relatedness, and that it relates to 'ta n:avta by letting them be what they are. So understood, the relatedness is, in my opinion, the decisive point that our determination must reach; thereby the idea of two terms is eliminated. Precisely this idea must henceforth be held off, even though it is not yet settled what all the references are which belong in the wholeness of Jtavta, and what the reference is of all the references to lv or in lv itself. Something is conspicuous to me terminologically in the summary of the last session. You, Mr. Fink, make a distinction between "cosmic" and

109 "cosmological," and you speak of cosmic moments and cosmological entities. FINK: One could bluntly conceive the relationship of gods and humans, which has been formulated in the dark formula "to live death, to die life," and say that the gods win the substance of their lives out of the death of humans, as humans win their life out of the death of animals they consume. To live the death of another would then be a process, a perpetual style of the process of life. We cannot connect any meaning with the idea that the gods need the life of mortals like they need the sacrificial animals of monals in early religion. If one wants to disregard the blunt idea, one must turn from a mere cosmic relationship between gods and humans to the cosmological reference of humans and gods. Gods and humans are not only like other living things; rather, they are both determined by an understanding relationship to themselves and to each other. The understanding relationship does not encapsulate the gods by themselves. The gods do not refer only to themselves; rather, they can experience their own perpetual being only in reference to the changeable being and being bound to death of humans. In order to understand their own perpetual being in their self-understanding, they must understandingly hold themselves dose to the death of humans. Understood thus, holding dose is not to be understood as ontic but as ontological or cosmological. Vice versa, humans, who relate to their own wasting away, must understandingly hold themselves dose to the perpetual being of the gods. This ontological understanding contains an analogy to the original relatedness of lv and x6vta. HEIDEGGER: If you reject the cosmic relationship as ontic and speak of a cosmological relationship instead of an ontological one, then you use the word "cosmological" in a special sense. In your use of the word "cosmological," you do not mean the common meaning of cosmology as the doctrine of the cosmos. But what, then, do you have in view? FINK: The holding [ verhaltende] lv, which contains all xavra, and not the cosmos, for instance, as a system of spatial points. HEJDEGGER: Thus, you do not use the word "cosmology" in the sense of natural science. It only concerns me to see the justification on account of which you speak of cosmology. You have your grounds, because you do not say "ontic" and "ontological," but rather "cosmic" and ""cosmological." FINK: The criterion lies there, where you yourself criticize ontology. HEJDEGGER: You speak about the relatedness of lv and m1vta as a world-relationship. FINK: I do not thereby understand it as a relationship of two terms. I think the fv as the one which lets everything arise as many in the sense of xavta, hut which takes them hack again.

110

HEIDEGGER: I don't want to tie you down to Heidegger, but fv-nc1vta as world-relationship indeed implies that fv, like the world, worlds. FINK: The fv is the gathering, letting-be, and also annihilating power. Beside the moment of gathering and letting-be, the moment of taking back again and annihilating is important for me. HEIDEGGER: If we think now of Fr. 30, which speaks of x6oJ.WV t6vbE, what is the use of XOOJW«; here in comparison to your use of the word "cosmology"? FINK: XOOJWV t6vbE does not mean the gathering of naVta in fv, but rather the jointed whole of nc1vta. HEIDEGGER: Thus, you do not use "cosmological" in the sense of the Greek XOOJW«;. But why, then, do you speak of the "cosmological"? FINK: I do not think the cosmological from out of Heraclitus, but rather from out of Kant and from the antinomy of pure reason. Pure reason attempts to think the whole. The whole is a concept that is first oriented toward things. In this manner, however, we can never thoughtfully experience the gathered whole. Kant exhibits the aporias of an attempt at thought that believes itself able to think the whole on the model of a spatial thing. Because the attempt does not manage with this approach, Kant subjectivizes the whole as a subjective principle in the process of experience, which is complimented by the regulative idea of the totality of all appearances. HEIDEGGER: The justification of your use of "cosmic-cosmological" in distinction to "ontic-ontological" is thus the allness ... FINK: ... which, however, is the allness of fv, of the self-gathering, letting-arise, and letting-pass-away. In reference to the clamping together of letting-arise and letting-pass-away, I refer to Nietzsche's motif of the coupling of building and breaking, joining and undoing, of the negation in the sway of the world. HEIDEGGER: I would like to touch on yet another difficulty. I share your interpretation of Fr. 62. For me also it is the sole possible way to interpret the formula, "to live the death of another, to die the life of another," in the manner you indicated. For me the question is how much we know, according to the purest sources, about the gods in their relationship to humans with the Greeks. In reference to your interpretation of the relationship of the gods and humans, one could bluntly say that you impute an existenz-ontology to the gods. According to its sense, your interpretation goes in the direction of an existenz-ontology not just of humans in relationship to the gods, hut also, vice versa, of the gods in their relationship to humans. FINK: In the world of religion we lind the strict demarcation between gods and humans. Professor Heidegger means to say, however, that when I ascribe an existenz-ontology to the gods, this would be be-

II I

l·ause the gods are not only distinguished from humans, but because they distinguish themselves in their own being from humans by holding themselves understandingly toward the death of mortals ... HEIDEGGER: ... and because they experience themselves as perpetual beings only in their self-distinction from mortals. FINK: Only because they have view of mortals can they experience themselves as perpetually being. The immortals are those who do not meet death; mortals are those who are bound to death. But Heraclitus converts this customary comprehension of Greek mythology, which lets mortals and gods be for themselves, and which lets them turn toward each other only occasionally. He makes this occasional relationship into a relationship constituting gods and humans in their own being. The immortal being of the gods is only possible if they relate themselves toward the mortal being of humans. The knowledge of human being bound to death constitutes the understanding of imperishable being proper, and vice versa, the knowledge of the perpetual being of the gods constitutes the understanding of mortal being proper. Gods and humans do not form two separated spheres. It depends on seeing not the chorumos [separation], but the intertwining of the godly and human understanding of self and of being. HEJDEGGER: It is not a question of speaking in a blunt manner of gods and humans as of different living beings, of whom the former are immortal, the other mortal. Spoken in the terminology of Being and Time, immortality is no category, but rather an existentiale, a way that the gods relate themselves toward their being. FINK: The godly knowledge of the being bound to death of humans is no mere consciousness, but rather an understanding relationship. With Athena, who appears as mentor to mortals in order to bring help to them, it is perhaps a matter of still another theme. The epiphany of the gods is no actual mortal being of the gods, but a masking. When Aristotle says that the life of 8EWQ£a [contemplation], which exceeds c:pQ6VT)Ot~ (practical wisdom], is a kind of godly life, an a8avat£~ELV (to be immortal] (whereby aeava't£~ELV is formed like tllT)V£~ELV [to be Greek]), that implies that in 8EWQ£a we comport ourselves like immortals. In 8EwQ£a, mortals reach up to the life of the gods. Correspondingly, we must say of the gods, that their comportment toward humans is a ··eava'tl~ELv" [to be mortal], presupposing that one could form this word. The emphasis lies in this, that the relationship of humans to gods cannot he described externally, but rather that they themselves exist as their alternate and counterrelationship, except that the gods, to a certain extent, have the more favorable existenz-ontology and humans, on the contra1-y, the less favorable. The godly and human understanding of self and being must project itself in mutual understanding. Ht:JDEGGt:R: In the relationship of gods and humans, it depends on

112 a phenomenon that had not been treated till now in regard to fv and navta: the standing open of gods and humans. You called the openstanding relationship between gods and humans a representative of the relatedness of fv and navta. FINK: With this, the oocp6v-character of fv is foreshadowed. The fv is gathering unity in the manner of A.Oyoc; and ooOv to n